Chuck vs the U-boat
by ninjaVanish
Summary: AU: Sequel to Chuck vs the Sunken Treasure. When Chuck and Sarah's romantic getaway is interrupted by a face from Chuck's past, they find themselves in a worldwide race against time to recover a lost German U-boat full of nuclear material before Rogue CIA division 'The Ring.' But all is not what it seems, and our heroes may be in over their heads. Er... better make that definitely.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: So this happened. Wasn't planning on writing this story. Like at all. But then the little germ of an idea got in this head o' mine and... well... here we are. Thanks rightfully go out to Frea O'scanlin for whipping up the awesome cover. And also to new Beta awesome person Aerox.

* * *

Chapter 1:

USRV Nautilus

North Atlantic

41o43' N, 49o56' W

Chuck staggered onto the deck of the research vessel in dire straits. He'd awoken, as had become usual thanks to the rough seas, horribly seasick. Unusually, Sarah had been nowhere to be seen. Granted, she had never been exactly sympathetic to his plight. In point of fact, she'd been mostly amused by it until he'd nearly ralphed on her shoes the day before. But today was the day, and he guessed Sarah had woke up early to pester the crew about something.

He found her coming out of the tower and waved her down. She grinned and strolled over easily, despite the heaving waves. Sarah looked him over expectantly. "Well, I guess you haven't puked up a lung yet. That's good at least. Feeling any better?"

"Not really. I slept better last night; I think we hit a lull or something?"

"Yeah, they're expecting it to finish clearing off pretty soon. Once we get down to three foot seas we can head out."

"That doesn't seem likely. What are we at now, fifteen?"

"Four."

"That can't be right..." Chuck said, glaring out at the ocean.

"There's a laser system aboard that checks that sort of thing down to the millimeter. I'm pretty sure."

Chuck turned the glare on Sarah, and she grinned and tossed her head to ger her windblown hair out of her eyes. He opened his mouth to complain about that sort of unnecessary cuteness this early in the morning, when his cPhone rang.

After their stint on a deserted island and the bullet-stopping demise of his last phone, Chuck had used some of his half of the reward money to upgrade. It didn't look like an upgrade, of course. People now constantly made fun of his phone, as well as the matching one he'd built for Sarah. His old phone had only gotten the occasional odd glance. The new one was nearly the size of an early '80s 'brick' cell phone, but it packed a lot of functionality into the extra room. For one thing, it was satellite capable, and had nearly twice the processing power of any other smartphone in existence. Not only that, but it was waterproof, shockproof, bulletproof (this time it'd stop most rifle rounds), and blastproof (for a certain level of blast). It also had a folding crank handle for charging built into the side opposite of the satellite antenna. Chuck wasn't going to get stranded on any desert island and unable to call for help ever again.

Which had its drawbacks at the moment. Without his new phone, Chuck would have been nearly unreachable out here in the North Atlantic. Chuck glanced at the caller id and sighed.

"Hang on, I've got to take this," Chuck said, folding out the sat antenna and flipping the unlock slider. "What's up Morg?"

"I just got my copy of Wired magazine. Is there anything you'd like to share with the class?"

"Oh, right. Surprise, buddy."

"'Chuck Bartowski, Hipster Hacker Icon and Amateur Treasure Hunter?' You didn't think I'd want to know my friend was about to become a celebrity?"

"Hipster? Icon?" Chuck said. "I wouldn't go that far..."

"You're on the frakking cover of Wired!" Morgan said. " A heads-up would have been nice."

"Whoa, whoa, wait. They said it was just a little puff-piece. I'm the cover story? Okay, I get why you're mad."

"You and Sarah both."

Chuck groaned. He remembered that picture now, the pair of them posing with a treasure chest full of faux-gold pieces. (The real gold they'd recovered on their most recent treasure hunt was in the Miami Museum of Natural Science) "Look, Morgan I really can't talk now. We're about to board the submersible."

"I'm sorry, what? It sounded like you just said... submersible. But that'd be just downright nutty..."

"It's Sarah's birthday, we're going down to the Titanic."

"No, seriously."

"She hadda hundred grand burning a hole in her pocket."

"I hate you both."

"See ya when we get back, gotta go! Sarah's tapping her foot impatiently and crossing her arms at me."

"I was doing no such thing," Sarah protested once he'd disconnected.

Chuck merely shrugged. "You want me to talk to Morgan all day?"

"No," she said after a moment's thought. "Your other girlfriend has been taking up a lot more of your time than I expected."

"Morgan is _not_ my girlfriend."

Sarah grinned. "Prove it."

There was only one way to deal with that particular grin. Chuck grabbed her and kissed her as thoroughly as he knew how. Sarah wrapped her arms around his neck and held him close, pressing herself against him, clinging like, to continue the nautical theme, a barnacle.

It was the applause that broke them apart finally. Chuck shrugged his shoulders trying to shield his sudden flush from sight as he pulled away. Sarah wore a matching blush and hid her face in his chest. Someone let out a wolf-whistle. "Great," Sarah said. "Bob Ballard just whistled at us."

"I'm sure Dr. Ballard has more important things to do before the..." Sarah put a finger to his lips, and nudged his head to the side. "Bob Ballard is taking a cell phone video of us."

"We're already on the cover of Wired," Sarah said. "What's an internet meme on top of that?"

Chuck shook his head and pulled away from her lips before she could capture him a second time. Sarah sighed and pressed her forehead against his cheek while he turned and called out to their esteemed tour-guide. "Is it time to go, then?"

"You can finish up... whatever it is you two were doing, first," Dr. Ballard said, grinning and putting away his phone. "Today looks like it's going to stay clear."

Sarah shook her head. "We're ready whenever you are, Dr. Ballard."

"Please, call me Bob," he said.

Sarah was mortified. "I could never do that!" she said. "You earned the title."

"Well, I only found the Titanic and the Lusitania. No sunken Dutch schooner full of gold."

"You heard about that?"

"News travels fast in our profession," he said. "If you hadn't bought your way aboard this cruise, I was ready to extend an invitation."

"Well, thanks a lot for waiting as long as you did," Sarah glared at him, but it was only about half-strength. "The ticket price was a little steep." She wasn't really angry, Chuck was sure. The price actually helped fund the expeditions now. With research dollars drying up, bringing out pay-passengers was just enough to make up their budget shortfalls.

"Don't think everyone doesn't appreciate it. In fact, you've been much more helpful than any non-crew member we've brought out. By about a factor of thirty. Usually we have to basically bar our esteemed guests from everything but their cabin and the mess. That's why I'm going to take you two down myself today. Follow me to the Ahab."

"Really? The submersible is named Ahab? Isn't that a touch... inauspicious?"

"Nice choice of words," Ballard laughed. "No. I already found my white whale. Now we're just picking at its bones, really."

Sarah frowned. "That's one way of putting it."

"You're not one of those who thinks we should just leave the wreck alone, are you?" Ballard said. "There's a lot we can still learn."

"No, I understand the value of your work out here. But I can see both sides, I guess."

"You know, I've been down to her, dozens of times. And in all those trips we've never discovered any remains. Even the bones are long since dissolved at this pressure and water salinity. There could be some bodies in sealed compartments. But we've all agreed to leave those be. Even the Russian teams agreed to that, and they're usually the contrariest bunch of... people... I've ever met."

The interior of the submersible was... cozy would be putting the best possible face on things. Besides them and Dr. Ballard there was one other seat, filled by one of the researchers. Every spare cubic foot was crammed with instruments. There were a couple of tiny windows, barely four inches wide each. Dr. Ballard explained most of their navigation was done using remote cameras on the exterior of the minisub. Even those tiny four-inch windows were made of nearly a full 12 inch thickness of Lexan. If they'd wanted a big enough window to actually see enough to navigate through, they'd have needed a thoroughly impractical thickness even of the new high-strength polymers. Almost as soon as the water closed over them, radio communications with the ship became garbled. By the time they were a football field's length under water, Ballard switched the radio off entirely as a waste of power. It was ominously quiet, except for the constant reassuring hum from the AC recirculating their air supply.

Sarah read off the depth gauge as they descended, two thousand feet, three, four. Now a full mile under water. Chuck fought down the shivers. He could do the math on the water pressure above them as well as anyone. Sarah patted his knee.

"If it makes you feel any better, in the event of a structural failure we'd never even feel it."

Chuck frowned at her. "What do you mean?"

"At this depth, the sub would collapse in less time than human nerve conduction velocity. We'd be dead before we could even really notice there was something wrong."

"She's not wrong."

"That's supposed to make me feel better?" Chuck looked around the cramped interior in a momentary panic.

"Not really," Ballard said with a shrug. "But there's nothing to be nervous about. We go over this thing with a fine-tooth comb before we commit to a dive. The space shuttle checklist is actually about twenty steps shorter than ours."

They finally came to a stop better than two miles under the surface, and deployed the RV, which would do most of the maneuvering. The smaller robotic sub was both more agile, and less expensive. If the RV got stuck the loss would only be a couple million. If the Ahab got stuck they'd lose Sarah Walker who was priceless. That was how Chuck thought about the situation, anyway. The research crew, and probably Sarah for that matter, were nearly as attached to Dr. Ballard. The RV still had to have a tether to transmit telemetry from the bigger sub, but having it attached to the main submersible instead of the surface ship cut down on a lot of expenses. Also, if the RV got its tether caught on something, both the RV and the Ahab could maneuver to try and free the snag.

Chuck looked out the viewport into the inky black void at the bottom of the world, and his hand found Sarah's, their fingers interlacing almost automatically. "Not much of a view..."

"Give me a second to see whether the lights held up. Sometimes we lose a few..."

Then there was light, and the wreck loomed out of the dark at them. Chuck squeezed himself close to the wall of the submersible, making himself as small as possible so Sarah could lean across him and take a look out the tiny view-port. It was different from seeing it on a TV screen, even through the distortion from the heavy poly-carbonate window. It was somehow haunting and beautiful and inspiring all at once. Sarah rested her head on his shoulder briefly and gave a contented sigh. "I wanted to do this since I was a little girl."

Chuck grinned and kissed the top of her head.

Dr. Ballard even let Sarah work the manipulator arm, and she managed to recover a china teacup. But they wouldn't let her keep it, no matter how much Chuck wheedled.

* * *

"You know, you really should let me pay you back for this trip," Chuck said later back in their cabin. "It's your birthday, remember."

"100,000, is way too much to expect you to spend on a birthday present, Chuck. Even with our recent good fortune. We've only been together for like six months."

"Eight."

"Whatever, I'm not counting."

"So, you're not expecting anything special on our anniversary?"

"Well, I wouldn't go that far..."

"Aha! A trap, I knew it."

"Yes, a trap," she rolled her eyes, "Like I'm in any position to spring a trap right now."

They were squeezed into Sarah's bunk and Chuck was giving her a massage. Chuck had somehow managed to smuggle the hot oils through airport security. There certainly hadn't been time for him to buy them before they boarded ship.

"You're tensing up again," Chuck said, fingers rubbing the knot between her shoulder blades.

"Just trying to figure out how you smuggled the oil through security."

"Smuggle? Moi?"

"I'm gonna figure it out..."

"FedEx," Chuck said, "I mailed it ahead."

"Ugh, that's so simple," Sarah grumbled. "That's actually kind of disappointing. So no trickery or smuggling involved at all?"

"Sorry," he said.

"Mmmdon't be..." Sarah murmured. "You give the best massages. I'll forgive a lack of trickery." She glanced over her shoulder at him. "This time."

"Well, in that case..." Chuck said. He deftly undid the clasp of her bra.

"Hey!" Sarah rolled over hurriedly, holding her bra tight over her chest.

"I thought you wanted more trickery?"

"How's this for trickery," Sarah growled, tossed the bra away and somehow flipped him over onto his back, reversing their positions without spilling them out onto the floor. She pinned his hands easily over his head.

Chuck gave her the Bartowski eyebrow dance. "And it isn't even _my_ birthday."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Shut up and kiss me."

* * *

London, England

Heathrow Airport

The last two days of their stay aboard the research vessel were something approaching anticlimactic. And now they were in a cab heading to the airport and back home to LA. Sarah was trying to get in the right frame of mind for being back in the States. She liked her coursework at the UCLA marine biology department, and her job teaching scuba, but she found herself missing the hunt already. She read the article in Wired in the taxi ride to the airport and reminisced about their most recent exploits. After all that business in the Philippines with the island and whatever that was with the CIA, it'd been fun and refreshing to go out on a simple treasure hunt for a four hundred year old Dutch schooner lost off the Florida coast with a hold full of stolen Spanish gold. True, the article left out the part where she and Chuck had been kidnapped by the gangsters piggybacking the treasure hunt, driven into a swamp in the trunk of a car, and held at gunpoint moments from being killed. That took some of the romance out of the event, but they'd managed to escape thanks to Chuck's ingenuity, stopped the bad guys, recovered millions in bullion and made a hefty profit in the process.

That had been almost three whole months ago, and now her birthday present to herself had fired her sense of adventure back up. She didn't think she'd have really wanted to go right back to treasure hunting, but the time off had helped rub off the rough edges in her mind. Like having a gun to her head. Sarah's musings were cut short when they arrived at the Heathrow departures drop off.

The taxi driver helped them unload the bags and Sarah followed Chuck to the check-in counter, dutifully handing over her passport. Chuck was handling that, and she liked to let him. But, something was wrong."Chuck, I think they put us on the wrong flight," she said, perusing her ticket. "This says Nice, France."

"Yeah," Chuck grinned. "Surprise!"

Sarah glared through her eyelashes at him. "It's too much!"

"We'll be back in LA in plenty time for your first day of class."

"Not what I meant," She said. "Chuck, it's too much as a gift."

"Nope, I got a good deal, and flying from London to the south of France round trip is like flying to Vegas from LA. It's almost the same price as a bus or train ticket."

"If you could take a train across the English channel."

"You know they built a tunnel under the thing, right."

"What? When did that happen?"

"Like fifteen years ago. Maybe more. Back in the nineties sometime. Where were you, hiding under a rock?"

"Well, sorta..."

Chuck winced. "Right. Sorry..."

"Don't worry about it," Sarah said. "It's in the past, right?"

"Yeah. Okay. Still, this wasn't supposed to be a whole thing with us. It was supposed to be a grand romantic gesture on my part."

Sarah looked at the ticket. "No, I get that. I guess I kind of overreacted, huh? France kind of always had this mythic quality for me, you know. It's weird thinking of just dropping by the south of France."

"I totally get that. I always wanted to go to Paris, see the Eiffel tower and all that."

"Then why not tickets to Paris?"

"This is your birthday, not mine. South of France has beaches, snorkeling... your kind of stuff."

Sarah frowned. "My kind of stuff doesn't include romantic dinners in Paris? You don't know me as well as you think."

"You want to go to Paris? I can get us tickets to Paris."

Sarah waved it off. "No, Nice sounds, well... nice."

Chuck rolled his eyes, and wrapped her in a hug. "It's pronounced more like neice," Chuck explained into the top of her head.

Sarah grunted and shook her head. "Okay, who made you the French pronunciation police, huh?" She turned to loop an arm around his waist and nudge him toward the security line.

"That would be Madame Grantly at Burbank High School," he said. "Don't you speak French? I thought..."

"English, Spanish, Tagalog, and some Thai," She said. "I took German in high school, but only for a year. I forgot most of it."

"Huh. Only three languages and some change, huh?" Chuck said, shaking his head ruefully. "Some spy you'd make. Isn't seven like the minimum?"

They had to cut the banter short, when they hit the head of the security line. It must have been a low volume day, by chance, since it'd only taken a few minutes to get that far. But, for some reason in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, the screeners gave Chuck and Sarah particular scrutiny. Chuck frowned. One of the screeners looked familiar. Tall and fit, with a bland expressionless face, the man pulled Chuck aside and insisted on searching his bag. Then they did the whole thing with the metal detector wand, before finally letting him go on. The man never spoke, and Sarah was a little worried by the time Chuck made it through to the gate area.

"What was all that about?" Sarah asked. Chuck just shrugged.

"No idea. But I'm glad we got here with plenty of time to spare or we'd have missed our flight."

As they walked to their gate neither noticed the screener who'd paid close attention to Chuck talking on his cell phone.

"I planted the bug, just like you wanted. Now can I please come in from the cold?"

"No," the voice on the other end replied. "You're still on the CIA's shit-list, Daniel. But there may be opportunities in the private sector soon. We'll keep you in mind."

"Thanks, Mr. Colt."

The heavy sigh was audible on the other end. "What did I say about using that name?" the voice said dangerously.

"Sorry sir, won't happen again."

"You bet your ass it won't!"

* * *

Sarah put her head on Chuck's shoulder and tried to get some sleep. The flight wasn't going to be more than an hour or so, but sleep wouldn't come. Chuck on the other hand seemed to just conk out with no difficulty whatsoever. After a few minutes into the flight, he started snoring. Actual snoring, like he was sawing logs filled with noise makers. Sarah glared at him and fumed silently for another couple minutes, arms crossed. And now she was too mad to sleep. It wasn't Chuck's fault and she knew it was irrational, but there it was. Sarah scrunched up her nose in annoyance as his continued snoring somehow droned louder than the plane's engines. She half-turned in her window seat and reached across, tucking her arm up under his light jacket into his armpit. Sarah paused then, reconsidering, but decided not to let him get away with it. She began tickling him unmercifully. At first, his slumber held, but after a few seconds, he began to stir. Finally, after a full quarter of a minute, Chuck jolted awake and began trying to worm his way out of his seat belt into the aisle, frantic to escape.

"Help, help, I'm being repressed!" Chuck said, laughing. "Ah, quit it! Stay on your side! Hands to yourself-Agh!"

"Is something the matter?" A stewardess said, appearing seemingly out of nowhere, blonde of hair and speaking in an Aussie accent.

Sarah blushed. "My boyfriend's snoring was keeping me awake."

"So you try to tickle me to death?" Chuck demanded.

"He's overreacting," Sarah said to the stewardess, who grinned and just shook her head.

"Try to keep the noise down to a dull roar, yeah?"

"No, wait, don't go? She's merciless!" Chuck complained. "I don't even snore! It's a conspiracy I tell you."

Sarah clamped a hand over Chuck's mouth and shook her head at him. "Conspiracy is one of those words I don't think you're allowed to say on planes, Chuck." Sarah nodded to the stewardess, who grinned and matched the nod with one of her own. The international conspiracy of blonde women continued unchallenged.

Chuck's eyes widened. He knew it! He glowered at her and crossed his arms huffily but didn't pull her hand away to speak. He arched an eyebrow instead, and opened his mouth to underneath her hand, slobbering on her palm.

Sarah wrinkled her nose and tugged her hand away. "Eugh!" She said, wiping her hand on her airline issued blanket.

Chuck shrugged. "That's what you get, trying to infringe on my right to freedom of speech. Great. Now I'm up, same as you."

Sarah cocked her head to one side. "In that case... mile high club?"

Chuck stared at her. "Um..."

She raised an eyebrow at him and bobbed her head toward the bathroom just behind their first class seats. "Wait a couple minutes, and then knock on the door."

"How will you know it's me?"

"Knock the first couple bars of the Imperial March," Sarah demonstrated on his leg, and then got out of her seat-belt and sidled past him. Chuck barely avoided getting hip-checked in the face. Sarah grinned and headed aft.

Chuck was still in something of a state of shock at this entire development, but he wasn't going to complain about it. He waited, nervous as all get-out, and finally, when he was gathering himself to go join her, a stewardess came over the PA.

"We're going to be encountering some turbulence, so we are turning on the fasten seat belt sign," the horrible voice said. "At this time we'd ask all passengers to return to their seats."

Chuck was halfway between sitting and standing. A stewardess in the jump seat at the front of the first class cabin saw him and pointed him back into his seat. "But, um. I've gotta use the bathroom."

"Is it an emergency?"

"Um. Well, I uh, you know... uhm... not really."

"Then sit."

"Ugh!" Chuck said and sat down huffily.

The plane did indeed hit turbulence a bare thirty seconds later. It only lasted a few minutes, but then the seatbelt light would turn back off and...

"We're going to be starting our descent soon. All seat backs and tray tables need to be returned to their full upright and locked position." Chuck groaned and rolled his eyes.

Sarah came back to her seat and sat with arms crossed, puffed her bangs out of her face grouchily.

"There's always the return trip," Chuck suggested.

"Mmhmm..." Sarah said raising an eyebrow. "You know, if you're willing to throw all this money around, maybe we should just splurge and charter a private flight."

Despite himself, Chuck swallowed nervously. It was the look in her eyes that did it, really.

TO BE CONTINUED...


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Thanks to Aerox on another super-fast beta turnaround time. So, fair warning, it's about to get crazy in here.

* * *

Chapter 2:

Chuck and Sarah walked to the beach from their hotel after a light breakfast. The noise complaint from the people in the room underneath them had dampened their enthusiasm about their original half-baked plan to stay in and have room service all week. The beach wasn't too crowded. Aside from a family building a sandcastle and a couple running with their dog, it was mostly deserted.

"Huh," Chuck said. "I figured this whole place'd be more crowded. Wonder what's up."

"I think this falls under the heading of not looking gift horses in the mouth," Sarah said, leading him out onto the sand. It was pleasantly warm; not quite eighty degrees out. The sand wasn't even hot enough to burn their feet when they shrugged out of their flip-flops and stretched out on beach towels. Maybe that was it? Not hot enough for most tourists? Didn't seem likely.

There was a kiosk set up renting beach umbrellas but it wasn't hot enough to need one. It was peaceful, aside from some gulls squawking off in the distance. The sun warmed them and Chuck stared off into the sea for a while.

Sarah cleared her throat, and Chuck blinked and turned to her. "What's up?"

She tugged her baggy t-shirt off over her head, shaking her hair out. Sarah grinned at the poleaxed expression on his face and stuffed the borrowed shirt away in the beach bag. "Didn't want you to miss that," she shrugged, digging in the beach bag and came out with the squeeze bottle of sunscreen. "You mind?"

"Um... Sarah? Are you feeling alright? When have I ever turned down the chance to rub stuff on you?" He blushed and took the sunscreen from her. "Um... forget I said that."

Sarah laughed and pulled her hair over her shoulder. "Good to know where we stand."

Chuck carefully massaged the sunscreen into her shoulders and down her back, then did her arms. Sarah peeked over her shoulder at him, and grinned. He leaned in close behind her and they kissed, slowly, soft and lingering. Chuck rested his forehead against the side of her neck after. "So, snorkeling? I saw a sign on the way for..."

Sarah half-turned and shushed him with a finger to his lips. "It's fine. I kind of just want to soak up some sun, if that's okay?"

"Whatever you want. It's your birthday trip."

"My birthday was four days ago," Sarah said.

Chuck shrugged. "Don't care. Still your trip. We do what you wanna do."

Sarah pressed her lips together to stop the grin from engulfing her entire face. She slipped an arm around his waist and pressed closer to him. "Okay," she said dropping her head down onto his shoulder.

They sat like that for a few minutes in silence, until Sarah's stomach started growling. Chuck raised an eyebrow. "Didn't you have almost as much breakfast as me at the hotel?" he said. "Where do you put it all?"

Sarah pulled out of the embrace and shook her head at him. "We had this talk already. I swim like four hours a day on average. Plus my KFM classes twice a week. It adds up."

"So this is my cue to go get food and drink," Chuck said. "Any requests?"

"What's that drink where they mix champagne and orange juice? One of them."

"I meant to eat."

Sarah shrugged. "Something French."

"Alright. Back in a flash," Chuck said, kissed the top of her head and hauled himself to his feet. "You think of anything else you want, I got my phone." He tapped the fanny pack at his hip.

Sarah nodded and rolled over on her front and undid the string tie of her top so she wouldn't get a tan line. Chuck blinked and stared in consternation.

After a moment she turned her head to look at him, raised an eyebrow. "That is entirely unfair," Chuck said.

"Hurry back."

Chuck kicked up a dust-tail on the loose-packed sand of the beach.

He went barely half a block before spotting a likely looking cafe. European dining wasn't known for fast service. But they got enough tourists that this particular establishment had a sign in English offering a 'to-go' menu. He slid up to the bar and ordered a pair of Mimosas and a pair of croque-monsieurs to go. That, despite what he'd told Sarah earlier, stretched his knowledge of French near its limits. He could remember more when he was just trying to understand somebody, but speaking it himself was more difficult. It was a quirk.

The bartender brought over the drinks and held up his thumb and forefinger. "Deux minute," he said. Chuck nodded and opened his fanny pack to retrieve his wallet. The cafe was, like everywhere else, remarkably deserted. Well, not completely deserted, but sparsely populated. There were just a couple of patrons aside from Chuck, and they were mostly interested in their brunch menus. He reached for his Mimosa and blinked when someone sat next to him, snaked away Sarah's drink and took a sip.

"Mmm..." she said. "Thanks, Chuck. Fancy meeting you here."

He stared gape-mouthed for a moment and tried gamely to recover. "Yeah. Aren't you supposed to be in federal prison somewhere, Jill?"

Jill's eyes widened momentarily, but she erased the surprise from her face in a split-second, so fast he almost thought he'd imagined it. She smiled thinly and took another sip. "You heard about that."

"Yeah," Chuck said. "And you owe my girlfriend a fresh drink."

"Girlfriend?" Jill said. "I guess I should have known. You always were a catch."

"Stop trying to butter me up, and tell me why I shouldn't have Interpol drop on you with both boots."

"Wow. So I guess you took Bryce's version hook, line and sinker. I don't even get to tell my side? You know he's a liar, Chuck."

"So he doesn't work for the CIA? You didn't break up with me so you could join a rogue faction of the CIA called FULCRUM run by Teddy Roark?"

"For certain values of 'rogue', perhaps," Jill said. "But do you really think you can trust everything the CIA tells you? I know you took that class junior year, on the kind of shenanigans they got up to in the fifties and sixties."

"You're avoiding the question. Why aren't I calling Interpol on you right now?"

Jill sighed. "I was hoping this wouldn't be necessary," she said. "There is currently a sniper with your girlfriend's spray-on tan, bleached-blonde head in the crosshairs. My boss wants to talk to you."

"Why doesn't he come himself?" Chuck said, not rising to the bait and mentioning that the tan and the blond hair were come by naturally.

"The French government isn't exactly on the best of terms with my employer, Chuck," Jill said. "He doesn't go strolling around on beaches, is my point. Best all around if you just come with me. We'll keep an eye on your girlfriend for you."

Chuck bit the inside of his cheek. His father, before his disappearance, had taught Chuck never to hit girls. But for just a second there, he considered making an exception.

Jill smirked. "Pay for your brunch, and let's go."

Chuck grimly counted off Euros onto the bar and put away his wallet. While he had his hand in the fanny pack he hit end call.

* * *

Sarah felt a shadow break across her back. "Chuck? That was quick."

A babble of French was her response, and she frowned and opened one eye, looking up at a man in a black speedo. She winced and shaded her eyes, twisted her arms around behind her back to re-do her top. "Sorry," she said. "I didn't catch that."

"Ah, Americaine," the Frenchman said, grinning. He was tall and wide, nearly half a foot taller than her and probably twice as wide. Sarah didn't like him, or his grin, or his speedo. "What is such a beautiful woman such as yourself doing at zee beach, all alone?"

Sarah rolled her eyes. And thanked her lucky stars when her phone buzzed. "Excuse me," Sarah said, dismissing the man. She dug into the beach-bag and retrieved her cPhone and her shirt, tugging it on over her head before hitting the slider on her phone. "What's up, baby?" Okay, so maybe she hadn't dismissed the man completely; he was still standing there, but at least he looked embarrassed by the come on now. And baby was one of those expressions that translated well into French, right? So the Frenchman knew she was talking to her boyfriend.

Chuck's voice came through, but he was talking to somebody else. What... sniper! A sniper was covering her?

Almost instantly her entire body went tense. Panic gripped her for a good four seconds.

She then took a breath and tried to calm down. Okay. Game on. Make a plan, carry it out. No second guessing. There couldn't be a lot of lines of sight to her position. He would have to be in one of the hotels nearby. And from what she was overhearing over her and Chuck's open push-to-talk line she wasn't the real target. Taking Chuck was their priority. The bad guys were casting her in the damsel in distress role. And that kind of pissed her off. She eliminated a couple of hotels right away, since the windows were awkwardly placed. Too far away and almost no windows facing the beachline. Someone with a sniper rifle would have to be out on a balcony in order to get anything approaching a clear shot at her. And a sniper on a balcony would get spotted himself in short order.

There were only two multi-story buildings nearby that would afford clear shots. And if TV and movies had taught her anything, snipers had kind of an unhealthy attachment to high spots. She was sure there was some kind of ballistics reason behind it. Bullet drop or velocity gradients or something physics-y. But it made them predictable. She scanned the top few floors of the closer hotel, on the assumption that he'd put his back to the sun if he could. Snipers could be accurate at absurdly long ranges, but only if they weren't blinded by glare. It was still before noon, so the sniper would be in the hotel off to the east.

And slightly tubby French guy might come in handy after all, as a human shield. "Can you take a step to your right please?"

"Pardon?"

"Uh. Droit... could you..." Sarah waved the guy over.

He frowned, but took the step she needed. "My English not so good. What is happening?"

Sarah waved at her phone. "Apparently my boyfriend has been kidnapped."

"You do not sound so very concerned..."

Sarah shrugged and got to her feet, scooped up the beach bag and whipped her wrap skirt around her waist. "It's not like it's the first time," she said. "Come on."

"Should you not call the gendarmes? Comment-vous dit... the police?"

"Just walk right there," Sarah said. "Between me and that building."

"The hotel? Qu'est ce qu'il s'passe?"

"Uh, that's where I think the sniper is," Sarah said. "You're my human shield. Make up for the sleazy, come on."

The man sputtered out a protest, but by then they were nearly to the beach umbrella stand. Sarah dug her billfold out of the beach bag. The umbrella rental clerk raised an eyebrow inquisitively. Oddly enough, even under his pavillion he wore a floppy brimmed hat. "I'd like to rent an umbrella or three. And buy that hat off you."

"We must call the gendarmes to rescue your copain!" Sleazy guy said.

"My what? I know what I'm doing," Sarah said. "Just open the umbrella and walk toward the hotel."

"Pourquoi?"

"Flush out the shooter so I can clobber him. You ever heard of a shell game?"

"Eh, non. And 'clobber'? Qu'est ce que c'est ca, clobber?"

Sarah grinned. "You'll see."

* * *

"Damn it," he said, and keyed his microphone. "I've lost visual. I think the girl made me somehow."

"Get it under control, these are not trained spies."

"Crap. She's definitely made me. The rifle's too high profile if I need to change positions.."

"The next words over this channel better be 'Back on target'." A pause when he didn't respond. "Do you copy. You can say copy."

"Copy."

His rifle was specially designed to disassemble quickly, which was how he'd smuggled it into the hotel in the first place. Smuggling it out quickly, and without attracting attention meant he'd have to disassemble it once more, and stuff it in his shoulder bag. It would be impossible to use in those circumstances, and his sidearm was a dinky little .22, not exactly confidence inspiring for him.

He hesitated before taking that step. It wasn't like he was up against some super agent or anything. The umbrella thing was weird, more than clever. It made it impossible for him to risk a shot, if he was even authorized to take a shot, which he wasn't. But at least he still knew where she was. There wasn't enough foot-traffic today for her to hide in the crowd. Then the situation changed. A second umbrella opened and started in the opposite direction. How the hell had she recruited help so quickly? His mission was screwed to the wall now. At the briefing it had seemed so simple, keep eyes on a hot blonde at the beach. Every male agent's dream assignment.

Now a third umbrella opened up, heading in still another direction and he ground his teeth. His elevated position was worse than useless. Time to move, and quick. The rifle snapped apart into two pieces with a quick twist of his wrists.

He went down the back stairs two at a time, as fast as he dared without tripping himself up. He paused at the landing windows to keep track of the umbrellas' progress. The first was heading almost directly for the hotel exit at the bottom of the stairwell. The other two were still in sight, but further away. At the next landing one of the umbrellas was missing. He cursed and fished out his sidearm from his shoulder bag, and screwed the silencer into place as he went down the last flight. He just had to get her back under control somewhere. Killing her had never been a part of his orders; even with what they had on Bartowski, the threat was immensely more valuable to them than following through on it. If anything, killing the girl would make an enemy for life out of the guy. Still he couldn't let her get away, and whoever she'd recruited couldn't be that loyal to her so quickly.

He shouldered open the door and scanned for the closest umbrella. A bewildered man in a speedo was under it. Not the hot blonde. "Shit!"

He kept the gun down at his side and stormed over. "Where's the girl, asshole? Which one is she."

"Eh? Je ne parle pas l'anglais."

He brandished the pistol. "Where's. The. Girl?"

"Behind you," the man said.

He whirled around in a panic. For a split-second he didn't recognize her. She'd covered up the blonde locks with a floppy brimmed hat, and somewhere she'd managed to scrounge a change of shirt. His brain scrambled to try and fit that into a scenario. She'd had him so focused on those damn umbrellas he'd somehow missed her sprinting ahead into position. How the hell had she figured out his position so quickly? Then the realization crashed in that he'd turned his back on a fairly beefy guy. Idiot! They had him boxed in. Threat assessment happened by instinct. A quick snap-shot to disable the greater threat. He started to turn back, and only then did he register the real threat out of the corner of his eye. The girl was charging him. What the hell? She was on him before he could set himself, inside his guard. He tried to backpedal away, and her elbow came across out of nowhere. The pistol went flying. He grimaced and swung awkwardly as he staggered back.

* * *

Sarah didn't even bother to bat the barely aimed swing away. She juked her head back and the punch sailed wide. Then she continued wading in. The gunman tried a kick, which was a stupid move, backing like that, he'd lose what little balance he had. Sarah fell deeper into her crouch and blocked the strike with a forearm shield, flowed her arm around it and tucked his foot into her armpit. She turned her shoulder and hips and drove an uppercut into his junk as she got her right foot out behind his remaining unengaged foot.

He tumbled over onto his back and Sarah followed him down, a left hammer-fist to the side of the head even before he landed stunning him for a moment. She used her momentum as she dropped to smash her forearm into his throat, driving him into the sand. She grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and yanked him up into a headbutt that smashed his nose across his face in a welter of blood. The impact sent her hat flying. Sarah shot back to her feet and fell into a defensive stance just in case, but he was out cold.

"Putain," Sleazy said, astonished at the violence of her assault. "Vous l'avez tue?"

"Huh?"

"He is dead. You killed him!"

Sarah checked the man's pulse and shook her head. "Nope. Still alive. Probably for the best, all things considered." She pursed her lips. "Still, his skull might be cracked. You should call him an ambulance." Even with the beach relatively deserted, their brief scuffle had attracted eyes, and someone would be calling the police soon.

"How you do this. You super secret super spy, yes?"

"Sorry, nope."

"Mais... you have a black belt? This at least, yes?"

"Not quite," Sarah said, plucking at the unassuming brown rubber bracelet on her right wrist. "My test is next month." She patted down the unconscious sniper for more weapons, or a wallet, but came up empty on both. Then she spotted the shoulder-bag and carefully slipped it off over the man's head. Inside the bag was... some kind of rifle. Duh. Sniper. Sniper-rifle. Okay. Sarah hoisted the rifle bag to her shoulder and thought to search the man's pockets for car keys. No luck. She went over and retrieved the sniper's pistol, and shrugged sheepishly, before pointing it at the Frenchman who'd helped her out so far and wiping the sniper's blood off her forehead. "You got wheels?"

A mesh pocket sewn into the waistband of his speedo produced a key, and he waved jauntily as she headed for the street. Sarah heard the sing-song sound of sirens before she got to Frenchie's Vespa. She thought of the guy riding around in his speedo on a scooter, big as he was... It was good for a chuckle. Sarah dug her cPhone out of her beach bag and snugged her new hat back down on her head as she started the scooter.

Sarah putt-putted away down the street as the police converged, and paused down a side street to fiddle with the touch screen. She and Chuck shared a minutes plan, since his 'gift' of a new phone for Christmas had been so complicated she'd just nodded and tried to trip him into bed. Eventually she had mastered all the various features, but they kept a joint cell plan so they could maintain the push-to-talk option. As a side-effect of that, both of them had online access to the wireless account and could, when the need arose, use the GPS in each others' phones for creepy possessive tracking purposes. Sarah figured this was as good a time as any.

* * *

"Is the hood really necessary?" Chuck said. He tried to keep the whine out of his voice, and the hood muffled his voice a little so maybe it had its good points after all. Jill stuck a gun in his ribs.

"We're here. Get out," she said. He heard the car door open and slid in that direction, questing ahead with his feet in the dark. Jill and someone else, who had yet to make a sound grabbed him by the collar and hauled him out of the car.

It was forty three steps from the car before Jill spoke up to warn him they were heading up some stairs. Four steps up and a pause while someone opened a couple of deadbolts, then down a hallway, feet clicking on hardwood or granite. Hard to tell just by the sound. Not that that knowledge would do him any good. Chuck found his brain churning along, trying and straining for any data. He couldn't turn his brain off.

Then a wait again, and a chime. Forward a few steps, and turn around. Suddenly he felt heavy, acceleration pressing him into the floor. An elevator, for about thirty seconds. Depending how fast the elevator was going that could be anywhere from three floors to ten. He remembered the express at Roark Instruments, and didn't think this one was that fast. Maybe four or five floors.

The bell chimed again, and Jill and the silent, nameless thug ushered him down another hallway. A heavy hand on his shoulder pressed him down into a chair. The hood ripped away and he blinked away dust and grit from the rough black canvas hood. The first thing he noticed were the bars on the window, and Chuck felt a moment of panic. But then he noticed they were largely ornamental, as were the shutters keeping out most of the late morning sun and leaving the room in dim and shadows.

Chuck was seated in front of a massive mahogany desk carved with lion's heads at the corners, and more carvings down the legs. A man lurked in the shadows behind the desk, a big man, probably at least Chuck's 6'3", but more muscular. Chuck couldn't tell another thing about him. Age, race, hair or lack of, whether he was about to shoot several holes in Chuck's precious fleshy bits. Nothing.

"So," Chuck said, trying to fill the ominously awkward silence. "What's so important you couldn't just try me on the phone?"

"Mr Bartowski, I'd like to offer you a job."

"Huh?" Chuck said. "I uh... I'm sorry I just really wasn't expecting that. What with the snipers threatening my girlfriend and all."

"Roberts, tell the sniper to disengage."

"Um, sir... we've lost contact with him and police are en route. The girl is in the wind."

Chuck grinned. Of course she was, which meant they'd lost their leverage. Other than the guns trained on him, and that kind of thing didn't really faze him the way it used to.

"How the hell did that happen!?" the man behind the desk bellowed, leaning forward in anger enough that Chuck got a vague outline of him, but little more. The man recovered his composure almost instantly, in a way that sent a chill down Chuck's spine. Towering rage one second, utter calm the next? Amazingly scary, but maybe intentionally so, to put Chuck off guard after the disclosure of their rifleman's ineptitude. "No matter. We had no intention of harming Ms. Walker. The threat was necessary to bring you to this meeting."

"And without it, I think I'd appreciate you dropping me off back at my hotel."

"There's more than one kind of leverage, Mr. Bartowski." A folder slid out of the shadows and across the desk. "Take a look."

Chuck frowned and leaned forward, flipped the top of the folder, and stared. He spread half a dozen glossy pictures out in front of him. Him standing over Teddy Roark with a smoking gun in his hand. Him firing a pistol into Teddy's back at point blank range... Only... that wasn't how it had happened. Not at all. "What the hell is this? These are Photoshopped."

"Oh, so you didn't kill Mr. Roark in Manila last year?" the voice from the shadows inquired cuttingly. "Would you be willing to swear to that in court?"

Chuck opened his mouth to protest and stopped short of claiming self defense. That was an admission of having killed Roark. Who's to say they weren't recording this? They obviously wanted to blackmail him into something, no reason to give them more ammunition. "Any court would throw those pictures out in a heartbeat, because they're _entirely_ fakes."

"But very _convincing_ fakes, Mr. Bartowski," shadow-man said. "I feel confident you'd be hard pressed to prove that they were not in fact quite genuine. And they do still say a picture is worth a thousand words, don't they? At any rate, it's not as if you can deny killing Mr. Roark, after all. We both know the truth of that. It's in your CIA file. Granted, Graham wanted to give you a medal for it, as opposed to the use we're putting it to..."

Chuck grunted. "You said there was a job offer in this somewhere. I hope you don't think I'm just going to blindly agree to whatever plan you're hatching, blackmail or no blackmail. I need to know what the work would entail, you understand, before I could possibly agree."

Silence met this assertion, for a long drawn out moment. Chuck made as if to stand, and Jill pressed him back down into his seat with the muzzle of her pistol in his neck. Chuck peered into the darkness, trying to get a sense of the man behind the desk. If he ever got out of this room alive, he'd need to know what their plan was, so he could tip off the proper authorities.

"You could at least tell me your name..." Chuck said. "Or _a_ name. Something. I've been calling you shadow-guy in my head."

"Decker."

"Like in _Blade Runner_?"

"Decker. Not Deckard," Jill said with careful emphasis. "I asked him the same thing."

Chuck half-turned in his chair. "Wait. That's his real name?"

"At the tail end of World War II, the Germans knew they were all but beaten, they began sending-"

"Sunken U-boat! You want me to find a lost, sunken U-boat! What's in it. Gold, jewels? Baby Hitler clones?"

"Plutonium."

Chuck made a strangled noise. "What?"

"Not much, of course. The Nazis never really got their production up and running, and their bomb designs were exceedingly inefficient. In 1945 they didn't have enough to build even one bomb. With modern methods, that same material could be turned into a handful of tactical yield nuclear weapons, if it fell into the wrong hands. We'd like your help seeing that doesn't happen."

Chuck shook his head, the cognitive dissonance overwhelming him. "The 'wrong hands'. Like yours. Sorry, no sale. You might as well shoot me now."

"I'm glad you feel that way."

"Do what now?"

"You seem to have gotten the wrong idea, Chuck," Decker said. "We're the good guys."

"Um. Really. You break Jill out of secret CIA jail, you try to blackmail me with murder charges in the Philippines, threaten my girlfriend with sniper fire-"

Decker leaned out of the shadows, grinning. "To see how you'd handle it. And you passed with flying colors." He slid a card across the desk to Chuck.

_**Clyde Decker**_

_**Deputy Director, CIA**_

Chuck held the square of cardstock up to the light, checking it for imperfections, or something. He wasn't exactly up on forgery techniques. He gave it up as useless. "So wait. Jill _was_ in prison, right? You just let her go?"

"Pardoned," Jill said, putting away the pistol.

He wasn't convinced. "No offense, but I trust you as far as I can throw you, Jill. You have something in writing on that front? Preferably with the President's signature on it?"

"I told you he'd say that," Jill said.

Decker sighed and produced another folder and shoved it across the desk. A presidential pardon, made out to Jill Roberts, signed and sealed. Official looking as all hell, as far as Chuck could tell.

Chuck regained his composure after a long silence. "Okay. What else can you tell me about this lost U-boat? We should probably bring Sarah in on this. She's the salvage expert."

"Supposedly it went down in March of 1945, somewhere off the Bahamas."

"That doesn't really narrow it down."

"The records aren't exactly complete. This was more than sixty years ago, remember. It's not like we can just run a database search."

"Yeah. I get that, but still, you'd think..." His phone began buzzing. "Hang on, that'll be Sarah." He glanced at his watch. "She made good time."

"What?"

"We've got this newfangled thing called autodial," Chuck said. "I called her when I spotted you at the bar."

"That's how she made the sniper," Decker said. He snorted a laugh. "Imagine what these two'd get up to if we actually gave them some _training_. Okay, put it on speaker."

Chuck nodded. "Hey, Sarah. You're, uh... you're on with Deputy Director Decker. And Jill."

"This is Decker, how did you elude our man?"

"He pointed a gun at me. I beat the shit out of him. Thankfully, I'm only being figurative. He should be out of the hospital in a couple days."

"Hospital?!" Decker said. "What did you-"

"Hey, shut up," Sarah cut across him. "That's not why I called. You guys know there's a bunch of guys done up like commandos about to storm your front door?"

"What!" Chuck blanched.

"Roberts, check the sentries," Decker snapped.

She nodded and put her hand to her mouth, talking into a wrist-mic. He noticed the earpiece for the first time. "Alpha one, report in. Alpha one acknowledge, now." Jill's eyes widened in horror as the sentries failed to report back.

The building shook and roared with some kind of explosion from below them, masonry quivering and plaster dust trickling down onto the dark wood of the desk.

Jill drew her weapon and ran out the door, the two men flanking the door following her. Moments later pistol shots rang out, and chattering bursts of automatic weapons in reply. A man screamed in agony. The gunfire and shouts continued.

Chuck looked at the phone in his hands. Sarah could hear that, it was still on speaker. "Sarah, I gotta go." He didn't want her to hear him getting shot if it came to that. And if they didn't shoot him, an active phone call might tip them off she was nearby.

"Chuck wait-" but he disconnected and stuffed the phone back into his fanny pack. He turned to Decker. "Okay, give me a gun."

"What? I don't have a gun. I'm senior staff. I'm _management _for Christ's sake."

"Not even a _little _gun?" Chuck said. Decker shook his head. "Like none at all?"

"What do you want me to say?" Decker shrugged helplessly behind his desk. The gunfire in the hall was trailing off, but the last fire they heard was automatic fire, not the slower pistol fire.

A machine gun barrel appeared around the door-frame, and then a man poked his head in. Two men followed in black tactical gear head-to-toe, black balaclavas covering their faces. They surveyed the pair of them. One looked back at the others, nodded, turned and drilled a three-round burst through Decker's chest. The Deputy Director slumped back into the shadows behind the desk and his chair fell over full into the darkness. Chuck clapped his hands over his ears against the roar of the gunshots, so close together that they sounded like just one long blast of sound. Just barely he thought he heard one of them say, 'Package Secure,' but that made no sense. They'd just _shot _a CIA deputy! What did they want with _Chuck? _

He kept his hands raised, on the off chance they still might think of him as a threat. One of the men came over, while his two buddies kept their guns trained on Chuck. The gunman who'd killed Decker came up to the desk, leaned over and spat at the dead man. He looked at the photos Decker had doctored and grunted, looked at Chuck askance. "You're the one killed Roark?" The man's face was unreadable behind the black mask. "Boss is gonna want to have a... conversation... with you."

TO BE CONTINUED...


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: So. Time for a car chase! Thanks to everybody who has reviewed so far, love the feedback. Also thanks to Aerox for letting me bounce two sets of mutually exclusive potential spoilers off him to make this story better.

* * *

Chapter 3:

They still hadn't spotted Sarah in her hastily chosen surveillance position across the street. But judging by the way Chuck had hung up on her, he was about to be captured or-she flinched from the thought-killed. And he didn't want her hearing it when it happened. Sarah grit her teeth. Kidnap her boyfriend, would they? Not if she had anything to say about it. She didn't have long to plan anything out. But their getaway vehicles had to be close. They weren't gonna take Chuck and flee on foot. She didn't know if they were even after Chuck. But after the sniper incident she wasn't going to take the chance.

Sarah glanced around and spotted a truck. It wasn't an eighteen wheeler, but a smaller cousin, almost along the lines of a U-Haul truck, but of course, whatever the French brand equivalent of that was. There was a picture of a fish on the side. So, a delivery truck. But nobody around. She'd need... there. Brick.

Sarah hefted the brick through the side window and opened the door, stooped to pry open the steering column. Hopefully her fathers lessons on hotwiring cars hadn't atrophied, and were applicable to European models. She breathed a sigh of relief when the motor turned over. Now, she just needed a way to keep the thing on target. Sarah grunted and tugged at the knot holding her gauzy wrap-skirt in place, threaded it through the steering wheel, and mashed the gas pedal down with her scavenged brick. Now she just had to wait until they came out to get in their getaway cars.

* * *

Whoever this new bunch of gun toting maniacs was, Chuck wanted no part in ticking them off. At least not unarmed and outnumbered, at least four to one. Probably more. One of the gunmen grabbed Chuck's wrists and bound them with a nylon zip tie. Chuck winced as it cut off circulation.

"Time to move," the man said, grabbed Chuck by the collar and shoved him toward the door. They didn't bother to put a bag over his head, like they wanted him to see their nonchalance. Like the dead bodies they passed on the way through the hall and down the winding staircase were just a demonstration of their resolve. Or their indifference to his potential testimony at a later date, which was even more chilling. These people didn't think he'd see the light of day ever again. And frankly, Chuck's hopes on that front were fading fast.

There were four more gunmen at the bottom of the stairwell, and it was only then that he realized he hadn't spotted Jill among the bloody bodies littering the upstairs. He tried not to get his hopes up that she was alive. The odds didn't seem exactly favorable that he'd be getting out of this one.

They hit the street and a trio of black SUVs swooshed up to the curb. "Get the package inside and-shit!"

A large panel truck was racing toward them down the street on an obvious collision course with the first SUV in line.. Most of the gunmen whirled that way and opened fire in a raucous chorus of gunfire. But two of them stayed by Chuck, holding him awkwardly each by one arm, while they tried to aim M4 assault rifles one handed in every direction.

Chuck tried to cover his ears, but the gunmen shook him roughly and one kicked his knees out from under him. The truck kept coming and its momentum was enough to crumple up the first SUV in a titanic crash of twisting, squealing metal and shattered glass. The gunmen fanned out around the truck and two went to check it. "Nobody in the cab!"

"What the hell is going on?" one of the men guarding Chuck demanded.

"Doesn't matter. Get him in the van and let's-" he cut off mid-sentence with a thwap-thwap, and his head spewed a red mist. The second gunman whirled and went down. Chuck stared in shock. Twenty feet behind them, Sarah sat on a moped, the smoking barrel of a silenced pistol leveled at the two dead, or dying, men.

He didn't waste any more time than that first second of shock, and grabbed the combat knife from the closest dead guy's combat vest, cutting his ziptied hands free. Chuck bit down on a sudden urge to vomit and spotted a pair of grenades on the man's web gear. The others were still looking the wrong way, but that wouldn't last forever, and Sarah was a sitting duck on that moped. He pulled the grenades free, not even bothering to try and figure out if they were lethal, or just flashbangs. Chuck snatched the pins out and lobbed them down the street toward the gunmen. Then he rolled the second man over and did the same thing with his pair of grenades.  
The first grenade rolled right up behind one of the unknowing gunmen and struck his foot.

The man had just enough time to glance down and snap his eyes wide in shock, before the world disappeared in a blaze of white heat.

Chuck felt a surge of relief that he'd been lobbing flashbangs and not high explosives, despite the fact that these men had shot up a CIA safehouse and killed Decker and probably Jill. But that was all he had time for. Chuck grabbed one of the dead men's guns, scooped a pair of box magazines from the pouch on the front and sprinted toward Sarah and the moped, his sandals flapping and making horribly audible slapping sounds against the soles of his feet.

Sarah revved the engine and spun the moped around in a half-circle so he could just jump on behind her, and once he had his arms around her midsection, she hit it.

Sirens blared from the side street Sarah initially tried, and she braked to a sudden stop. "Crap."

"Back the other way," he said. "They'd have mapped out an escape route, maybe we can find it."

"You want me to drive back toward all the guys with guns!"

"They're still trying to shake out the cobwebs and figure out what's going on," Chuck said. "Hey, new bag?"

"There's a sniper rifle in it," Sarah said, whipping them around in a quick 180 degree turn and heading back toward the scene of the crime at the moped's top speed.

Chuck unzipped the bag and dropped his spare mags into the main compartment, then slung his captured M4 off his shoulder. "Um, try to cover your ears, this is gonna be really loud," Chuck said, wincing himself in anticipation. He swung the gun around Sarah's midsection and rippled off the whole magazine in one roaring burst as they passed the line of SUVs. He kept the fire low, trying mostly to take out tires. But he wasn't really aiming so much as he was sweeping the gun like a broom down the whole formation. Black-clad gunmen still stood in the street shaking their heads and trying to recover from the volley of flashbangs. One of the SUVs sagged down on its rims, but the other two peeled out behind them. He realized if he'd left them well enough alone the gunmen might not have even noticed them in the confusion of their raid being ambushed.

"Ow!" Sarah shouted.

"Oh no, are you hit?"

"No! That was just really freaking loud!"

"I tried to warn you."

"Forget about it. See if you can do something about that other SUV!"

Chuck thought about it for a second, clinging to her and leaning into a turn as they tried to steer away from the sound of sirens that seemed all of a sudden to be coming from every direction. "I don't want to let go with both hands to try and aim. Give me that pistol?"

"Take it, just makes driving harder."

"Um. Where is it?"

"Waist of my bikini. Left side."

"Um..."

"Don't get squeamish. It's not like you've never had your hand in there before!"

He felt around gingerly for the weapon, and snagged it. Sarah swerved suddenly. "Crap!" She said.

"What?" Chuck said. "Are you alright?"

"Fine, you... just kind of... snapped the string."

Chuck looked down, and despite the situation, still managed to blush at the expanse of bare flesh on display. He tried to split his attention between helping repair the damage and not fumbling the pistol. "What happened to your skirt!"

"Stop worrying about my bikini, you prude! Shoot out their tires!"

Chuck flushed a deeper shade of red, and half-turned. But shooting out the tires of another vehicle from the back of a swerving moped with one arm around the waist of a half-naked, wildly cursing Sarah proved more difficult than it would seem at first glance. And it seemed plenty difficult at first glance. Chuck emptied the whole clip and sparks flew up from the pavement, but that was it. None of them managed to hit the behemoth rapidly closing on them. The gun ran dry and the slide locked back on an empty chamber. "You got any more bullets for this thing?"

"No!"

"Good riddance," Chuck said and hurled the tiny automatic at the lead pursuing SUV. This time somehow, his aim was true, and the gun smashed into the windshield, sending a spiderweb of cracks across the windscreen. The SUV swerved and plowed into a parked car before the driver could recover. The second SUV slowed to skirt the wreck, but it only bought them a little time. The remaining SUV's driver was sticking a pistol out the side window now. Chuck would have to risk trying to reload the assault rifle and turn to fire it at the SUV.

Up ahead, Sarah spotted the beginnings of a police roadblock and cursed. Then her eyes widened. "Chuck, hold on tight. I've got an idea."

"Oh God, I don't like the sound of that..."

"Grab on tight!"

Chuck squeezed his arms around her as tight as he could, and Sarah hit the brakes. The SUV suddenly seemed to be racing toward them impossibly fast in what Chuck could see of the rearview.

"Lean left, now!"

Their massive deceleration was probably the only thing that stopped them from flying right off the moped as they swung 90 degrees. Sarah twisted the throttle and they zipped forward down a side alley. The SUV overshot the alley and its tires screeched as it tried to stop suddenly.

Chuck's eyes widened. "Sarah?"

"Yeah, I know. I see 'em."

"Please tell me we're not..."

"Sorry. Only way."

She tried to throttle back, but they were already teetering over the edge of a narrow pedestrian stairway, which happened to be full of people.

Chuck glanced over his shoulder. The SUV had backed up, and... no way. It was following them. The alley was barely wide enough for people to go back and forth up the stairs at the same time. The SUV's side windows smashed off in a flare of sparks, and then it was crashing down the concrete stairs behind them, with barely an inch or two of clearance total.

"Faster. Must go faster."

Sarah's eyes widened when she spotted it in the moped's rearview. "Get outta the damn way!" she shouted. "Move it, people!"

Chuck tried it in French, waving frantically. "Bougez vous! Allez-vite! Uh... s'il-vous plait?"

But people were still staring in shock, for a moment. Then they turned and ran, a flood of screaming humanity ahead of them.

The jolting, bone shivering ride stopped momentarily when they hit a landing. One man, later than the others in overcoming his shock, spotted them on the moped and tried to shove Chuck and Sarah off and take the vehicle for himself. Sarah elbowed him in the gut and revved the engine. The man made another grab, desperate, and Chuck punched him in the face as they passed. The man reeled back against the wall and nearly lost his balance. But Chuck couldn't spare the man another thought. The SUV was gaining.

He heard the man screaming in French, and then the voice cut off. Chuck didn't look back. _That could have been us_. The thought shivered through him as they rattled down another section of stairs.

The crowd was bleeding away into other, even narrower side alleys, with a few brave souls peeking back around the corners. "Think we can fit down one of those side passages?"

"I don't want to risk it and be wrong," Sarah shouted her reply. The alley made a sort of shallow dog-leg turn and... "Oh crap."

The crowd and the slight turn had obscured the fact until now, that the alley stopped against the back wall of a building, splitting into a T-intersection with much narrower alleys to either side, at least it looked like it. "If I never get a chance to say it, know that I love you very much," Chuck said.

Sarah's eyes widened at the surprise admission. Her face hardened in determination. "Today is not the day we die, Charles Bartowski!"

She revved the moped and hurtled down the last stretch of stairs, and somehow managed to powerslide around the corner, and squeeze them at almost full speed down the left arm of the T-intersection barely a second ahead of the SUV as it slammed into the building behind them. The busted windshield must have kept the driver from realizing his peril until the very last second. He hadn't even tried to slow down. Chuck risked a glance over his shoulder, and saw deployed airbags and a cloud of stone dust amid the twisted wreck. It was impossible to tell if anyone survived within, before the twisting alleyway hid the wrecked SUV from sight.

They came out onto a street, suddenly blinking against the shift to bright sunlight from the gloom of the alleys, and turned to put the sirens behind them. They went a block or so, and then headed down a second alley, and finally stopped. "I think we lost them," Sarah said shakily.

"Yeah," Chuck said.

"That means you can let go of my boobs."

"What?" Chuck said.

"You're..."

He looked down and blinked. "Sorry! I didn't mean to... grab... those. You said hang on tight."

"Yeah, and you certainly did," Sarah pinched the cup of her bikini through her shirt and shifted it back into proper position.

"Um..." Chuck said, now distracted by the snapped side of her bikini bottoms. "What happened to your skirt?"

"I had to steer that truck somehow while I circled the block."

"Wow. I take back that thing I said."

Sarah frowned, pausing in the act of tying the snapped ends of her bikini back together. "What thing you said?"

"Yesterday. About you not having the right qualifications to be a superspy. Seriously. You threw that whole thing together in what? 90 seconds?"

Sarah shrugged. "Would have just got myself killed if you hadn't thought quick with the flash-bangs."

Chuck shivered, remembering. "We need to get off the street. Fast. Whoever those guys were, there's still like half a dozen of them running around with assault rifles. And they killed Decker and all his CIA guys. Probably Jill too. Though I didn't see her body."

"Speaking of which..." Sarah said. "You want to ditch that thing? Might attract a little more attention than we need right now."

Chuck nodded. But then paused. "Might need it later though," he said. "Hang on, let me see if I remember how to do this..."

Sarah turned to watch him fumble with the weapon. "Don't shoot yourself."

Chuck ejected the magazine and worked the charging handle. He tilted the weapon so she could see the empty chamber. "It's empty, don't worry about that," he said. Though he did remember to put the thumb selector switch back to safe, which he'd forgot to do during the chase. "There's a pin somewhere that... aha, gotcha!"

The gun seemed to split in half, the top part, barrel and fancy attached optics and all, swinging forward and down like a break-action shotgun. "Right, then this pin at the front and..." there was a metallic snap, and the top half came off entirely. Sarah's eyes widened and she shrugged out of the shoulder bag she'd pilfered from the sniper at the beach after she'd headbutted him into unconsciousness. It just barely fit inside, in its half-disassembled state. Chuck slung the now fairly heavy bag over his shoulder and they walked away from the moped. Too many people had seen them on the thing, and the crowd from that stairway alley was going to be spreading, asking questions. The police would be setting up a perimeter at some point, probably. Chuck and Sarah needed to be far away from the moped when that happened. They hit the street again and walked back in the direction of the beach.

"We need to get off the street," Sarah said.

"Hotel, up at the corner," Chuck pointed.

"Looks kind of scuzzy," she said.

"Beggars can't be choosers. And we can't exactly use our travelers' checks or credit cards. They knew who we were."

"You sure?"

"They wouldn't have shot everybody except me if they weren't after me, specifically," Chuck said. "And that SUV driver came after us like we were his Moby Dick."

"Talk later," Sarah said and they filed into the lobby.

It looked like any number of hotels witnessed in old movies set in Europe, cramped and dim, but not necessarily seedy. Though the carpet should probably have been replaced years ago.

"How much for the night. Uh, desolait. Parlez-vous anglais?"

The man at the counter shrugged. He eyed their beachwear and didn't answer aloud, just rubbed his fingers together in the universal signal for 'gimme some scratch, yo'. The posted nightly rate was €49.99. It was the European equivalent of an econolodge, Chuck realized. "I don't have a credit card, or ID," he said. "Is that a problem?"

The clerk just shrugged. Just what Chuck wanted to see. That made their efforts to disappear a little less fraught. Chuck dug his wallet out of his fanny pack and handed over a fifty euro note. The man took the note and looked at it. Then beckoned for more.

Chuck narrowed his eyes and glared. The clerk eyed him, then Sarah up and down, eyes lingering on Sarah's legs, and leered. Again the man never said a word. Chuck grimaced and selected a twenty. The man at the counter eyed it and then raised an eyebrow as if offended. Chuck peeled off another twenty, and the man nodded, turned on his swivel stool and took an old fashioned key down from the pegboard behind him on the wall. He tossed it to Chuck and the money disappeared.

Chuck started toward the elevator, and the man cleared his throat, tapped the actual old fashioned paper guest registry. Sarah shrugged and took the pen, wrote down the names Heather Chandler and Dick Duffy.

Chuck raised an eyebrow as they waited for the elevator, and Sarah shrugged. "People I knew in high school. First thing that came to mind."

"So, this Dick Duffy? Should I be jealous?" Chuck said, punching the button for their floor.

Sarah wrinkled her nose. "No. Definitely not. I just went for the most different from us you can get. They were the worst. Forget about that."

"Right. We've got more important things to worry about." The elevator stopped, and they walked to the door. Sarah stopped him when he reached to unlock the door.

"Not this one. I don't trust the clerk any farther than I can spit."

Chuck's eyes widened. "Then what?"

"You still have those paper clips in your nerd-pack?"

"Fanny pack."

"I stand by my phrasing," Sarah said with a twinkle in her eye. Chuck grumbled and produced a pair of paperclips.

"What are you doing?"

"Remember the peg-board with all the room keys? I spotted that the room next door wasn't rented. We'll stay there instead," she explained while she bent the paper clips into a makeshift pick and torsion wrench.

"What if somebody comes in and takes that room, only to find us in it?"

"This isn't exactly a tourist hotel. There's like two other rooms with people in them, Chuck. It's a risk, paid off clerk or not, if the cops show up, he's sending them right to the room he assigned us."

While she spoke, she began working on the door. Sarah glared at him. "What kind of lookout are you?"

Chuck shrugged and turned to shield her hands from anyone who happened to show up. But she was right, the hotel was mostly vacant. It had that feel. "Okay, finally got it," Sarah said a minute or two later.

The room was tiny, a bed and a chest of drawers and a window overlooking an alley. That was about it aside from the sink and a tiny closet. There was no bathroom, and Chuck frowned in consternation. "Probably at the end of the hall," she said. "Old building like this."

Chuck nodded. "Okay. we need to figure this out. How did they find us?"

"Who? The CIA or the mystery goon squad?"

"Let's take it in order," Chuck said. "CIA first."

"Well, our plane tickets are in our names. Our hotel reservations are in our names. Our cell phones have GPS and are in our names," Sarah said. "Pick one."

"Okay, so we're not being very sneaky and anybody on the grid can be found. Okay. CIA explained. How did the mystery goon squad find us? And is that really what we're going to call them?"

"You got a better idea what to call them?"

Chuck shook his head sourly. "No. Whatever. How did they find the CIA safehouse?"

"Followed the car from wherever Jill shanghaied you?"

"I'd figure the CIA would be able to pick up a tail, wouldn't you? Those SUVs weren't exactly subtle. Did you see anyone else watching the place?"

"I don't think so. But CIA didn't spot _me_ tailing them."

"You were following my phone's GPS, not physically watching the car."

Sarah pursed her lips in thought. "Did they scan you for bugs?"

"No. But why- Crap," Chuck said. "That's it. I'm bugged. But how?"

Sarah shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not exactly an expert in spycraft. I've got some overlap in skills, from my misspent youth, but..."

"Phones have GPS, internet, onboard power. Your target always keeps it on them, even when they change clothes or go swimming, they keep the phone safe. That's the simplest way to do it," Chuck sounded more confident. "If it was me. There's plenty of redundancy if they want to track you all kinds of different ways. But I haven't left my phone just lying around anywhere. It hasn't been out of my direct control for days."

"Except at airport security," Sarah said.

"So, what? You're saying they had an inside guy at Heathrow?"

"Check your phone first to be sure. Remember that guy took forever searching your stuff?"

Chuck nodded and quickly began disassembling his phone. It took him a full minute to find the bug, because it was so small. If he hadn't built his phone himself from the ground up, he probably never would have spotted the tiny extra bit of circuitry attached to his phone's motherboard.

With the tiny phillips-head screwdriver he kept in his fanny pack, Chuck removed the bug and paused. "The rest of those guys could still be following this tracker right now."

A seagull alighted on their windowsill and Sarah grinned, digging in her purse. "I've got an idea," she said. Her hand reappeared with a small protein bar. She pinched off a tiny piece and Chuck passed her the tiny bug. Sarah pushed it into the hunk of protein bar and inched the window open. She shoved the little morsel out onto the sill and the gull went for it almost immediately.

Sarah slammed the window closed, and the startled bird took off, disappearing down the alley.

"That ought to keep them busy for a while," Sarah brushed her hands off and frowned. Chuck was looking a little upset. "What's wrong?"

"I went off to get you food and you had snacks in your purse?"

"It's my emergency protein bar," Sarah waved the offending snack and wrapped it back up, dropped it in her purse. "Not my 'mild-hunger-that-the-boyfriend-can-just-as-easily-satisfy-with-real-food' protein bar. This was an emergency."

Chuck rolled his eyes and finished reassembling his phone. "Whatever. Should we change rooms? Or floors or something?"

"I don't know," Sarah said. "Eventually, absolutely. We're going to need to change hotels entirely. And figure out a way to get out of the country, right? What did the CIA want with you anyway?"

"It was weird. A job offer. They wanted me to find some lost U-boat full of plutonium." Chuck filled her in on the few details Decker had given him as to where to find the thing.

"Plutonium?! We should call Bryce- or no, maybe it's better to go straight to the top. I still have Graham's card in my wallet somewhere, from when they tried to recruit me out of high school," Sarah paused. "Wait. A whole U-boat full of plutonium? That's... I don't know off the top of my head what the cargo capacity on one of those was. But that's... that's a lot of plutonium."

"I don't think it's a whole U-boat of plutonium. I think Decker said only enough to make one bomb back in the forties. I don't know how much that was. I'm guessing like ten or twenty pounds? I seriously don't know. But there had to have been a lot of cargo room left over."

"Like for plunder?" Sarah's eyes lit up.

"Oh, good grief," Chuck said. "You want to go after it ourselves."

She gave him an impish grin and shrugged. "Maybe. Not _by _ourselves though," she retrieved her wallet and found Graham's card eventually.

She took out her own phone and stopped. "Actually, check my phone for bugs first. Now I'm paranoid."

But Sarah's phone was clean. It was another weirdness. Why hadn't they had a tracker on Sarah? "Okay, it's ringing," Sarah said.

"Hello?"

Sarah frowned. It was a woman. Wasn't this supposed to be Graham's direct line? "Hi, I'm uh... nevermind. I need to talk to Director Graham. It's important. Bryce Larkin will vouch for me."  
"What?" Sarah's face went bone white and she turned to stare at Chuck in horror. "What do you mean. Bryce or Graham? Oh, god. They're _both _dead?"

TO BE CONTINUED...

A/N: One more time, I'd like to thank you all for reviewing. Especially now that the show is long gone, your continued reviews feed my desire to write this story.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Sorry this took so long to get out. One of those chapters that every time I look through it I find things to alter. Finally just said enough. Thanks to Aerox the Beta wizard who blazes through these chapters at lightning speed, and still manages to catch pretty much every time I write a weird sentence or forget how commas work. (Which is a bigger problem than one might think...)

* * *

Chapter 4:

Chuck felt his stomach lurch as if someone had just slugged him. His eyes widened and he bounced to his feet, snatched the phone right out of Sarah's hand and hit disconnect. He held the button until the phone shut down, then pried the back off and removed the battery and sim card.

"Chuck, what the hell?" Sarah demanded.

Chuck gestured with the halves of her phone in either hand. "I don't think they had enough time to trace the call. To know where we are."

Her eyebrows went up. "Uh... okay. Wasn't that why we were calling though? So they could come help us out?"

"Bryce and Graham are probably the only people at the CIA who would ever believe us."

"What? That doesn't make any sense."

"Think about it. Somebody you never heard of comes and tells you they got kidnapped by a deputy director of your agency, to find a sunken nazi U-boat, and then a bunch of dudes came in and shot him and tried to take you away. But then your girlfriend saved you and now you're on the run after a moped chase through the back alleys of Nice?" Chuck said, placing Sarah's deactivated phone on the bed and serving his own phone the same way. "I lived it and I don't believe it. Not only that, but they then namedrop two recently deceased CIA employees, one of whom is the big boss man himself?" He started pacing, Sarah watched wordlessly as that all sank in. Then he stopped and cursed, kicked the bag with the guns in it. "And this. You beat up a CIA agent pretty good, right?"

Sarah winced. "Yeah. He's definitely in the hospital for a couple days at least."

"And... I think I grabbed my gun off the one that killed Decker. At the time I was just reacting. It was the closest weapon I could find. But now... God. Plus, I threw that pistol at the one SUV, and it's probably got our fingerprints and the guy you beat up's. Ballistics will match that to two dead guys in the street! French police will be gunning for one or both of us for murder, at least unless those guys turn up on some terrorist watch list and they figure we did them a favor."

"So, what you're saying is we're screwed."

"Right to the wall," Chuck said. "And it's not just the French we've got to worry about. When the CIA gets word about Decker being dead and starts putting the pieces together, they'll be looking for us too. Although, we've maybe got some time until that happens. Not a lot of time. The police were already on the way to the scene when we left. They'll be able to ID Decker's body pretty fast I'd think. Then the French version of the CIA, whoever they are-"

"DGSE," Sarah chimed in. "What? My dad reads Tom Clancy, they were just lying around through my formative years."

"Okay, DGSE will want to inform our guys what happened," Chuck went on. "They'll have police reports of the blonde and the lanky guy on the moped making their escape."

"But probably not our names."

"CIA will make that connection. They may not have a trace on our location, but our 'private number' with the phone company isn't going to slow them down at all. They've probably got your name already, and they'll check air travel records."

"Assuming they don't have your meeting with Decker in some kind of database."

"We've got to get out of France ASAP, then."

Sarah nodded. "I don't disagree, but that's easier said than done. Our passports are as good as waving a sign," Sarah said. "For the good guys and the bad guys too, whoever they are."

Chuck grimaced. "I guess our best hope is that international cooperation, even between allies, finds some hiccups."

"Are the French still our allies?" Sarah said. "Didn't we tick them off pretty good renaming French fries or something?"

"Among other things," Chuck said. It was a small ray of hope. "I don't know how we get out of this, even if we make it out of France before the CIA starts hunting us. They _are_ going to be hunting us at some point. Being on the run for the rest of our lives doesn't sound like too great of a plan."

"Without proof we're the good guys, they're just going to lock us up and throw away the key. So we get proof," Sarah said. "Of all of it. The U-boat, the guys who killed Decker..."  
"I was afraid you were going to say that. How the hell do we do any of that?"

"One thing at a time, like chopping down a tree. First, let's just concentrate on getting out of France, then we can worry about figuring out where the U-boat is and recovering the plutonium and catching the bad guys. Even the first of which is going to take more than our three grand in traveler's checks."

"Which have our name on them and are extremely easy to track."

"If CIA thinks we killed Decker, they'll be coming after us anyway; if we just exchange them for cash and then go off the grid we might be okay."

"And on finding that U-boat, we're going to have to crack into naval archives. I don't even know where those would be, much less how to go about getting access."

"What about Casey?" Sarah said. "Maybe we can play the NSA off against the CIA?"

"He stopped returning my calls after I tried to get him to fix that parking ticket... I think he changed his number."

"Great," Sarah said. "I need new clothes. You do too. We can't go back to our original hotel room, and trying to get on a plane in our swimsuits would be pretty freaking suspicious."

"And we'll have to change our appearances somewhat. Hair dye at least, for both of us."

"Ugh, I hate dyeing my hair," Sarah said grumpily. "But I see your point. Actually, we should check to see if we made the TV news first before we go about doing that."

Chuck nodded, and flicked on the old analog set, and they sat on the edge of the bed together.

They flipped channels for a while, until they found a local news station. The building where Decker had been killed was recognizable, but only just. It was engulfed in flames, smoke billowing up in a thick black pillar. Fire engines, European versions looking slightly odd to Chuck and Sarah's American eyes, were having difficulty combatting the blaze. "Crap. What does this mean?"

"For us?" Sarah said. "Probably that we've actually got some time. The police and fire department have got to be stretched thin, so going out for disguise supplies isn't as risky. It might even mean that we've got a lot of time. You understand any of the broadcast?"

"A little," Chuck said. "Oh, it looks like the commando guys thought fast. Or at least, the news people are reporting only gunfire, no confirmed fatalities so far. So they took their own guys into the building, or something. I don't know how they escaped. Police aren't reporting any arrests at this time."

"Damn, that's impressive, all of them got away?"

"Seems that way," Chuck said. "Okay, I'll go get us some new clothes. I'm less conspicuous than you in just your bikini bottoms and that shirt. There's gotta be like a French equivalent of Target, right?"

"Probably," Sarah said. "You want to risk putting our phones back together to check?" Chuck frowned for a moment, bent down to look at the phone jack. "What's up?"

Then opened his fanny pack. "Not a problem. We'll just use dial up."

Sarah raised an eyebrow and stared at him for a moment, when he produced a length of cable. "I think I can take the socket apart and wire into the phone jack with my ethernet cables. This is why our phones have that adapter, remember?"

"You take spare ethernet cables with you to the beach," Sarah said with a grin. "And yet you protest when I call that thing the nerd-pack."

Chuck huffed sulkily and pulled out a tiny screwdriver set to begin work. Sarah just watched it all with that same bemused grin. Finally Chuck glared at her. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing. It's cute," she said. "Any luck?"

"Yeah, let me just put the battery back in," Chuck said. He turned on his phone. And hooked his makeshift ethernet/phone lashup together.

"So?"  
"Give it a second, I'm having to set up a proxy server as I go. Okay, ISDN connection is a go. Loading now... there's uh... an Auchan? They call it a Hypermarket, if Google translate isn't letting me down. Looks like they've got all kind of stuff."

"I thought you knew French," Sarah teased.

"For that, I'm going to get you bright purple hair dye," Chuck said. Sarah crossed her arms and stared flatly at him. He rolled his shoulders self-consciously, then came back and waggled his eyebrows. "Or maybe this silk lace bustier?"

Sarah blinked. "You're kidding."

He flipped the phone screen so she could see.

She chewed her lip for a moment. "No, too expensive. We're on a budget."

"Right. Anyway. There's one up north of the big freeway, E74 or whatever it is. Probably have to call a cab though. Ooh, Decathlon. Sounds like a sporting goods store. That's probably good to hit too. These flip-flops aren't really doing it."

"Yeah here, this ought to help out," Sarah said, digging her wallet out of her purse to pool their resources.

"You think I should risk trying to cash in all the travelers' checks? Looks like there's a bank in this same shopping center."

Sarah chewed her lip. "I don't think so. Wait until we run out of ready cash," she said. "I've got a couple hundred Euros, and my emergency prepaid card."

"Your what now?"

"My in-case-I-have-to-go-on-the-run prepaid card."

"And you're just mentioning this now," Chuck said.

"It's not exactly a platinum card Chuck. It's five hundred extra bucks. Probably mostly untraceable, but not gonna get us very far."

"Probably-mostly untraceable?"

"I paid cash in Miami for it," she explained, "so it's only a risk if somebody is looking closely, specifically at that particular Auchan store's credit card receipts. Then they'll see a purchase via a pre-paid card with a point-of-sale from Miami. Where someone sufficiently devious might conceivably remember we were briefly a while back. But my name isn't attached to it anywhere. I suppose taking the thing out to its wildly improbable conclusion, a sufficiently dedicated search might find me on the little corner bodega's security tapes. If they don't recycle their tapes once a week. That was like two or three months ago. So, probably mostly untraceable, but not _certainly_ untraceable."

"God you're cute when you do that, you know?"

"Do what?"

"The nerdy criminal vibe." Sarah rolled her eyes and shoved the card at him. "So, your two hundred, plus the card, plus my six hundred. That'll get us started on some new clothes. Maybe some suitcases so we look less suspicious to the guy downstairs when we check out?"

"Yeah. Good idea. I'm thinking I might have a plan for passports when you get back. Here, take the hat," Sarah said. "Just in case the police do have a sketch of you they haven't released yet. I wish you could take your phone."

"Too risky. Maybe I'll pick us up some burners; we can use their sim-cards in our cPhones. Oh, and um... I'm going to need your sizes... my usual MO when buying you clothes, 'get you a size zero and a receipt,' isn't going to work this time. If we're potentially on the lam, I don't want to have to make several trips."

Sarah blinked in surprise. "Wait, you want to know my bra size. That's why you're blushing right?" Then grinned evilly. "You got a measuring tape in the nerd-pack? We should be sure we get this right."

Chuck's blush deepened, which of course only made her grin wider.

"Actually, yes. I do," he finally said, producing it.

And of course, one thing led to another, and it was another hour and a half before Chuck got around to calling that cab.

With a spectacularly more-comprehensive-than-necessary set of Sarah's measurements in-hand, Chuck made his way across town. It was only a couple miles of absolute distance, but traffic was snarled up with the continued attempts to put out the fire. The pillar of smoke was visible from the back of the taxi, and the driver spotted Chuck watching it.

"It is nothing to worry about," the driver said in English with only a faint accent. The man probably got enough tourist fares to keep him in practice.

"Yeah?" Chuck managed to keep his voice steady. "You know what's going on?"

"Building caught fire. Probably someone dropped a cigarette. The old buildings, some of them don't- how you say- uh, diffuser pour-" the cabbie took one hand off the wheel to make a weird fiddly gesture.

"Oh, fire extinguishers. Sprinklers."

"Oui," the cabbie snapped his fingers. "Many of the old buildings don't have built in automatique fire sprinkler systems. So, the tiniest spark, et whoosh!"

"That really doesn't make me feel better. I'm staying in one of those buildings..."

"Ah, desolait. Peut-être you should look into different lodgings."

"I just might do that," Chuck said.

"Oh, here we are."

"Thanks. Um, do you mind waiting? I shouldn't be too long."

"I'll leave the meter running," the cabbie said.

"Oh," Chuck said. "Then I'll be that much quicker." He lit off for the so-called Hypermarche. It was a bit of a culture shock, even though it was similar in function to an American style Wal-mart or Target. He went to the menswear section first, and grabbed a couple changes of clothes. Shoes were a little trickier, because he didn't know how European sizes worked. But he persevered, and with a little help from a salesperson, got him and Sarah squared away with good solid hiking boots. Next he went to get Sarah some clothes, which was when things took a turn. It wasn't like a guy buying clothing for a woman was unheard of, but even in the States he always got fumble-footed awkward. The language barrier didn't help. "Uh, hi. Parlez-vous l'anglais?"

"Oui?"

"I need to get some clothes for my girlfriend, but... um, the measurements she gave me aren't in metric, and I forgot my phone?" He could have done the math himself, but time was literally money with the cabbie waiting outside.

"Ah, oui. I can help," the woman said, producing a pocket calculator. Chuck blushed and reluctantly handed over the list of measurements.

"Um, you can just ignore most of that. The first few numbers are the actual..."

But the ladies' saleswoman was already fighting a grin. "Mon dieu. She certainly wanted to make sure you got this correct, didn't she?"

He managed to fight the worst of the blushes, he thought, despite the woman's continued needling as she helped him pick out clothes for Sarah. His explanation that their bags had been lost at the airport seemed to satisfy any curiosity she may have had. But she seemed to take inordinate glee in pooh-poohing his attempt to buy Sarah simple functional sports-bras instead of full-on lacey lingerie.

"You'll thank me, later," the saleswoman said, slipping an expensive silk negligee and garter set into the cart without asking.

Chuck sighed and nodded, and finally got away from the pesky saleswoman. He considered waiting until the woman wasn't looking and ditching the fancy underwear, but finally decided against it. He already had the mental image forming in his mind.

Chuck grabbed a pair of hair dyes almost at random, only deciding to make Sarah a redhead at the last moment, when he remembered her saying something about brunettes that one time.

Of course the girl at the checkout had a similar knowing smirk as the first saleswoman while she scanned in the items, and Chuck began to fear that it might really be possible to blush oneself to death.

Chuck stopped and dropped off the clothes with the cabbie. He'd only gone through a couple hundred euros re-equipping them with clothes, and the Decathlon store was calling.

He took a quick lap of the sporting goods store, collecting a few odds and ends that they might need. Compass and canteens and a little survival kit, and a pair of those survival bracelets Sarah had provided the time they'd found themselves stranded on a seemingly deserted island. He couldn't quite reproduce Sarah's entire emergency kit from their adventure in the south China sea the year before, if only because Decathlon didn't sell flare guns or machetes. They did, however, sell golf clubs, and more importantly golf-bags to take on planes. It was another drain on their limited funds, but Chuck took the chance and bought a set of the cheapest clubs he could find, and a hard sided golf club travel-bag. He'd been thinking about how they were going to get back to the States a little himself, and the clubs just might help in that regard. He almost forgot and had to run back from checkout over to the luggage section to grab a cheap duffelbag for their trip to Decathlon went through another big chunk of their ready cash, and he decided to take a risk. He popped over to the bank and exchanged his travelers' checks for cold hard cash. Judging by the TV coverage they'd seen so far, the local cops weren't looking for them yet, and they needed the operating capital. Chuck wasn't ready to risk a withdrawal from any of his bank accounts, since the CIA probably had access to records of US banks. If the locals did start looking for him and Sarah, hopefully this would be where they dead-ended.

He made small talk with the cabbie, which he would later be utterly unable to recall, and got dropped off two blocks from the hotel, right where the cabbie had originally picked him up. The man offered to help him unload the purchases, but Chuck managed to dissuade the man with a generous tip. If not for the money from the travelers' checks, that would have cleaned him out completely.

It was a long two-block trudge with the golf bag and duffel slung across his back.

Sarah merely raised an eyebrow when he returned. They hadn't discussed the golf bag ploy, or his unilateral decision about the travelers' checks, and he expected a fight, or at least an argument. "You cashed in the travelers' checks, didn't you?" she said almost before he finished setting down his purchases.

"Um... yeah. How'd you know?"

"Math," Sarah said. "Two or three days clothes for each of us, plus shoes, and the bag would have taken about half our money. Add in the golf clubs, and you wouldn't have any money to pay for the cab ride back."

Chuck shrugged. "Sorry, I'd have called, but..."

"No. I get it. It's a risk, but I get that we need operating capital. But could you explain the golf clubs, please?"

"Camouflage," Chuck explained. He took the sniper's looted bag and extracted the two halves of the M4, stuffing them down between the golf clubs. "Seemed like a shame to leave the firepower behind.

"How is that going to get past airport security?"

"Something you said before this whole thing blew up. We should charter a private plane back. Security is looser for those. We basically walk direct from the cab to the plane. Customs doesn't x-ray anybody's luggage."

"You sure about that? We might be better off leaving the guns behind."

"Where somebody can find them and link us to them and pick up our trail. Young obviously rich couple off for a weekend golf trip, we'll be beyond suspicion."

Sarah chewed her lip. "I don't know. Make sure you're right about the no x-ray thing. Sounds like a loophole they'd have closed a long time ago to stop drug smugglers."

"They've got those dogs trained to smell drugs," Chuck said. "Not guns. At least I don't think they have gun-sniffing dogs. But I'll check. Oh, did you figure out how to get us new passports?"

"Yeah. But you're not gonna like it. It's probably a bigger risk than smuggling the guns in this." She punctuated it with a backhand to the golf bag, then explained on and Chuck grimaced.

"I don't like it," Chuck said, crossing his arms. Sarah rolled her eyes.

"Told you so, didn't I? But it's our only shot. You just don't want me flirting with guys in a hotel bar."

"Well, that, and all the pickpocketing your plan involves," Chuck said.

Which was how they found themselves in a much nicer tourist hotel just after sunset, Sarah with newly-dyed hair in one of her changes of clothes, lounging at the bar. Chuck, now an awkward-feeling peroxide blond, was seated at a table off in the back, with a decent view of the bar to back her up if she needed it. But if she did need it, they'd both pretty much just be doing a sprint for the door. They couldn't afford to be caught. He hoped she knew what she was doing.

Sarah stayed at the bar for more than an hour, chatting amiably with the men who swooped in and bought her drinks, trying to pick her up. A couple of times, she approached couples, and from across the bar, he could make out the accents she adopted, trying to drum up conversation with her 'fellow New Yorkers', and 'fellow Minnesotans' and 'fellow Texans'. After what seemed like an eternity, Sarah threw her drink in the latest pickup artist's face, shouldered her purse and stormed out of the bar. Chuck hadn't seen her pick any pockets at all.

He waited a few minutes for the ruckus to settle, before following her up to their room, and stared in consternation for a good fifteen seconds.

Sarah sat cross-legged in the center of the bed, surrounded by a circle of passports.

"Um... wow," Chuck said. "You're really good at that. I didn't see anything."

She shrugged. "I think I was five when my dad started teaching me," Sarah said. "It's sometimes a struggle not to take your wallet when you're not looking. Or are distracted by kissing me. Old habits, you know?"

Chuck grunted. "So, how does this help us? These people are gonna discover their passports missing at some point, right?"

"Yeah, but most of the couples I lifted from are here for at least a week," Sarah explained. "That's why I took the risk of approaching them and chatting them up, so I could get a feel for their departure schedules. Chances are, they won't think they were stolen when they first notice the passports are missing. First they'll check with the front desk, thinking maybe they left them somewhere, and try to retrace their steps. And then they'll go search their bags and rooms top to bottom. So, call it at least a couple hours from the point where they even notice the things are missing, which probably won't be for a couple days. So, we've got a built in grace period if we move fast. I'm pretty good at doctoring passports, so once we take a couple of bad passport photos of ourselves, we should be able to head out. How much is our charter going to run?"

"More than we've got," Chuck said glumly. "I think I'm going to have to go black hat, at least for a little while."

"Black hat?"

"As in hacking. The passports give me a pretty good shot at gaining access, but I'm kind of hesitant to start phishing for these people's credit card numbers."

"You can do that?"

"In theory. I've never actually done it, you understand. But I know how, if just from being the guy trying to stop it from happening at the other end."

"Isn't that risky?"

"Well, we're already breaking a bunch of laws, right? What's a little wire fraud added in. If it makes you feel any better, I fully intend to pay them back once we can safely access our bank accounts again. So really, we're only borrowing the money."

Sarah shook her head. "Yeah, that doesn't make me feel any better. I can just see you trying to explain that to the Gendarmes' cybercrime division."

"I'll be careful," Chuck said. "And it's not like we really need that much money. Maybe twenty grand is all."

Sarah's eyebrows rose. "That's all. Like twenty grand isn't a lot of money?"

"Well, it isn't when you're talking about hacking," Chuck said, then went on thoughtfully... "It's really all just moving ones and zeroes around, when it comes right down to it. In fact, I could always just steal the money from other hackers... but I'd need a better computer system before I'd want to go up against anybody with a chance of defending themselves."

"Hang on. Time out," Sarah said. "Weren't you the one giving me all that guff about stealing from mobsters a couple months ago in Miami?"

"Most hackers don't have guns, Sarah," Chuck grabbed the bedside phone. "And besides, my nom-de-guerre has a reputation to uphold. If I tell them I'll get it back to them, they'll know I'm good for it, plus a little interest. Might not even have to do any stealing."

Sarah shook her head. "The hacker as loan shark?"

Chuck shrugged. "Welcome to the twenty-first century. Sorry I had to drag you here kicking and screaming." He gathered his phone and his fanny pack.

"What are you doing?"

"Going downstairs to see if this place has a business center PC I can use."

TO BE CONTINUED...

* * *

A/N: Thanks also to everybody who's been reviewing this story, please keep them coming. I need validation! Just got my latest rejection letter from a publisher.

:-(


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Sorry this chapter took so long. I'm working long hours at my new job, so finding time to write is harder now. Thanks again to Aerox for the quick turnaround on this one.

* * *

Chapter 5:

**Paris**

**Charles de Gaulle Airport**

"I'm not so sure about this plan," Sarah tucked a stray wisp of red hair behind her ear and whispered in the back of the limo on the way to the airport. The taxi from Nice had cut deeper into their legitimately-gained funds, so the limo, like their chartered private flight, was funded through Chuck's hacking proceeds. He hadn't technically had to resort to stealing anything, since he'd managed to get into the bank records of their stolen identities and moved the decimal point on their victims' balance to the right one. The bank would discover the intrusion eventually, and have some cross words for the Cargalians of Brooklyn, New York, for taking advantage of a bank error, but by then Chuck and Sarah would hopefully have access to their _own_ accounts once more, and could make good on the 'loaned' funds.

Chuck leaned in closer, whispering himself in turn, "It was your plan in the first place. Well, mostly."

She glared at him briefly, and then rolled her eyes. "If we go to jail for the rest of our lives I'm not signing you up for conjugal visits."

Chuck clutched his chest as if mortally wounded, then stuck his tongue out. "If that's the way you wanna be, fine. I'm sure I can wrangle up some creepy true-crime fans if I have to. They'll be all over me when the ballistics matches me up to the slugs in Decker."

Sarah wrinkled her nose. "Ewg."

"Kidding."

"I know, but it'd totally happen exactly like that," Sarah said, "Hence, ewg." She mimed sticking a finger down her throat and gagging. "Can't we talk about something else, try to take my mind off the impending disaster?"

"I thought that's what we _were_ doing. Prison not sounding all that bad from my end, what with the groupies and-ow!" Chuck cut off, rubbing his arm where she'd punched him.

"No groupies for you," she said.

"How is that fair? I'm sure you'll have your own groupies!" Chuck said. "You're far prettier than me. You'll be the belle of the Prison Ball. That's a thing, right?"

"What kind of prison movies have you been watching all your life?" she said, struggling not to roll her eyes at him again.

"Well, the ones about women's prison have certainly been eye-opening. 'Double-D Block Babes,' 'Caged Heat?' Where did you _think_ I learned how to do that one thing with my tongue you like."

Sarah's eyes went suddenly wide. "Ew, ew! Don't ruin that for me!" she hissed. "Tell me you're kidding!"

Chuck shrugged airily and Sarah stared at him, unsure whether to believe him or not, until he finally broke down into laughter. Then she punched him in the arm again, harder than before, and the limo pulled up to their plane.

"See," Chuck pointed, "You didn't even notice when we went through the checkpoint."

Sarah blinked. "This is still a bad plan," she said.

"Our passports _are _going to hold up, aren't they?"

Sarah shrugged and crossed her fingers at him. Revenge for his earlier teasing? Hopefully. The driver came around and let them out of the back of the limo-not a stretch, just a fancy sedan, since their funds were stretched-and onto the tarmac. Sarah scooted out of the back seat ahead of him and Chuck followed. Their pilot, a tall man in a white shirt with those little fiddly bits on his collar-epaulets, Chuck's brain reported a beat late-was waiting to shake Chuck's hand and usher him and Sarah aboard.

The charter had run nearly twenty five thousand dollars, since they had to pay for the flight crew's return, even if they weren't using it. Chuck didn't believe for one second that they wouldn't be able to fill a New York to Paris charter flight on short notice, but he knew as well as anyone how that game was played.

Billed labor hours at the Buy More had, had only a passing acquaintance with reality, and this was only different in the matter of scope.

Chuck felt a brief pang of nerves as the ground crew manhandled their bags up the Leerjet's boarding stairs, but somehow the golf bag didn't spill open and send guns and parts of guns scattering all over the tarmac while Chuck tried to shove them back into golf bag to the accompanying strains of Yakety Sax. So at least his actual nightmare on the subject from the previous evening hadn't come true... yet. Sarah paused to straighten his collar and ruffle his dyed-blond hair before they headed up the boarding stairs.

A French customs agent came up into the plane while Chuck and Sarah were still getting situated, introduced himself and began grilling them. It wasn't meant that way, of course, and thankfully they had a story prepared. Since Chuck and Sarah were basically stealing the New York couple's identities for the brief purposes of fleeing the country, Sarah had spent a good deal of time, the night before, drilling the story into him and it paid off.

"We're sorry to see that you're cutting your trip short, Monsieur et Madame Cargalian," the man said, glancing briefly at their passports. Sarah's work there-after a couple hours tracking down an old photo-booth to take fake passport photos in-seemed to do the trick, and the customs man handed them back quickly.

Chuck took up their prepared story easily. "Oh, we're not really cutting it short," he said. "But something came up; we got a tee time on short notice at Augusta National. We'll be flying back in a couple days."

"Oh," the Frenchman's eyes widened. "That's... remarkable."

"We don't even have time to stop by our house," Chuck said. "So I had to buy clubs here." This of course was the hole in their story, since any golf course would have rental clubs, and they had to sell it now.

The customs man blinked, "Eh, couldn't you rent clubs?"

Sarah nodded. "Oh, I'm going to rent. But Frank just _had_ to have his own set."

"I'm actually not that good at golf. Sometimes I get mad and break clubs over my knee," Chuck said. "They charge an arm and a leg when I bust rental clubs. It winds up being cheaper to buy my own."

The Frenchman looked a little taken aback by all of that, but laughed good-naturedly. "Ah, well, we must get to business. Are you taking anything out of the country, such as wine or foodstuffs purchased here..."

"Just the golf clubs," Chuck said. "We left most of the rest of our luggage at the hotel. We didn't even bother to check out, since we'll be coming right back. But don't worry, they've still got our credit cards."

They all shared a laugh at the idea that Frank and Mary Cargalian of Brooklyn, New York would ever run out on a hotel bill, and the customs agent went down his little list, finished satisfied that all was as it seemed, shook Chuck's hand and headed down the little stairs. Chuck and Sarah strapped in and the little business jet taxied and its engines roared.

They'd done it.

Of course, they weren't out of the woods yet. There was still customs in the US to deal with, and passport control, where Sarah's work would truly be tested. But, really all they had to worry about now was the Thompsons noticing their passports missing. Chuck and Sarah considered it less likely they would notice the anomaly in their bank balance so quickly. Still, as the hours ticked slowly by, the tension mounted.

Finally coming to a decision, Sarah unbuckled, half-turned in her seat and poked Chuck in the side. "Ow, hey!" he said, clutching his side. "What's wrong?"

Sarah merely raised her eyebrows and looked around the interior of the plane.

"I don't get it," Chuck said.

She rolled her eyes. There was no flight attendant, just the pilot and copilot, and they had disappeared into the cockpit early in the flight, leaving Chuck and Sarah some privacy. "Remember the original reason we thought of for chartering our own plane?" She hit a button in Chuck's armrest and his seat flew back. Sarah spun over to straddle him.

"Oh." Chuck said, blushing. Sarah grinned and ruffled his bleached hair. "I guess blondes really do have more fun."

They were much less stressed out, and safely dressed again, when the pilot's voice came over the cabin PA system announcing they were beginning their descent. "Mmm..." Sarah grinned. "Going down. He's a little late to the party, isn't he?"

Chuck went crimson and Sarah chortled.

"I can't believe you said that!"

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Please, that's not even the dirtiest thing I've said on this _plane ride_. It barely makes the top ten even if you're only counting the first week I knew you."

"We fought pirates and gangsters the first week I knew you," he grumbled. Chuck sulked briefly, and then they were on the ground.

* * *

**New York**

**JFK Airport**

Customs coming into the US was where things could really fall apart. They gave the passports more than the cursory glance French customs had given. People leaving a country were usually given less scrutiny than those trying to enter. But Sarah's work on their stolen passports was up to the challenge, and their bags came through without a problem. Once out on the street, Chuck and Sarah dumped their 'borrowed' passports into an international express mail envelope, minus their fake passport photos, and mailed them back to France. Throwing away passports was one of those things that was apt to draw attention from the people who emptied the trash. Even the most numbed-by-their-thankless-job usually had enough human kindness left in them to fish out passports if they spotted them. The cash left over from their traveller's checks had to be changed back into dollars, which took time, and another bite out of their money, since the bank didn't give them the best exchange rate. Chuck figured there was some amount of 'invisible service charge' built into it.

Chuck and Sarah were still operating under the assumption that they were now or soon would be wanted, as 'Chuck' and 'Sarah'. So, new false identities were in order. Now that they were in the States, back on somewhat familiar ground, their options became a little better. Midtown Manhattan, after a taxi ride that took yet another small but significant bite out of their funds, offered any number of skilled professionals who might aid the twosome in their disappearing act.

Sarah had contacts; which was a little jarring for Chuck. He knew about her and her fathers' past as conpeople, in the abstract. But the _first _phone call she made hit paydirt, which spoke to a level of competence and loyalty among peers that he wasn't expecting. Chuck had a fair number of preconceived notions as to what Sarah's conwoman past had entailed, and he'd never really stopped to examine them. "So, who are we going to see?" Chuck asked waiting in line for a metro pass. "Some ex-boyfriend who makes fake ids? Ex-girlfriend?"

Sarah rolled her eyes. "No. God. Well, technically."

"Wait, what?"

"Not my ex-girlfriend. My dad's ex. For a while there she was kind of unofficially my step-mom... ish. Dad couldn't stomach some aspects of raising a pre-teen girl. Some of the... mechanical... topics needed a woman's touch."

"Mechanical? Oh, ew. Who can blame him for outsourcing that?"

Sarah shook her head. "Anyway, she's kind of a specialist in fake IDs. So, that should work out, and it'll give us someplace to lie low while we figure out our next move."

"Huh. Funny coincidence that we 'borrowed' identities from New York and you happened to have such a trusted contact in new york."

"Eh, trusted-ish," Sarah said. "We're not gonna tell her everything, obviously."

"My point was-"

"I know. We said one thing at a time. I didn't even know if she was still gonna be living here, and I didn't want to get your hopes up," Sarah cocked her head at a thoroughly unintelligible announcement over the subway train's PA system."Okay, this is our stop."

They got up out of the Subway station and walked a couple blocks to a beat-up old Brownstone, headed up the front steps and rang the bell. The response took a minute or so, and then there was an extended period of locks and chains being unlatched on the other side of the door, and finally a soft boom that might have been a heavy locking bar being thrown. "Your step-mom is very security conscious," Chuck said while this was still going on."

Sarah shrugged. "It pays to be, in her business."

"You never really said what that was, by the way."

"She's a counterfeiter."

The door creaked open, to reveal a middle-aged brunette, a couple inches shorter than Sarah with a couple wisps of gray in her hair. She was dressed in a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and jeans. "Please, Katie, 'Printing and Engraving Specialist.'"

Sarah grinned and shook her head. "Tomato, tomahto," she said. "And I haven't been Katie in a long time, Janet."

"Well, fancy that. I haven't been Janet in five years myself. So what should I call you and your friend here?"

"Hi, I'm Chuck," he said, extending his hand in greeting. Not-Janet took it briefly and then looked at Chuck a little more closely.

"That's your _actual_ name, isn't it?" she said, somewhat taken aback.

"Hey, I didn't tell you my last name, did I?"

"What's your last name?"

He even took up the standard pose. "Bond, Chuck Bond."

Not-Janet stared for a moment, Then turned to Sarah. "Where did you find this guy?"

"Long story." Sarah shrugged again. "Call me Sarah, for now. That's part of why we came to you. We need new IDs, and some walking around money."

"Well come in off the stoop. I don't talk business out in the street."

Sarah hid a wince. "Business?" she said, "I was hoping more like a favor. We're kind of tapped at the moment."

Not-Janet closed the door behind them and locked up. Chuck had been right, there was a huge steel locking-bar on the reverse side of the door, almost like something you'd see in an old-timey castle or something. The entryway was fancy but shabby, like it hadn't been kept up recently. The furniture was all antique, or maybe just old, given the condition. The whole bottom floor of the Brownstone was packed to the rafters with old furniture. Some of it was worth good money, probably, to certain collectors. Chuck had begun to develop something of an eye for that sort of thing lately.

Not-Janet led them to a staircase in the back and Chuck cleared his throat. "Okay, you win, Lady. I'm through calling you 'not-Janet' in my head."

"Nadine, then. That ID doesn't have any heat on it yet. Call me Nadine."

"Great," Chuck said. Sarah looped her arm through his and gave his shoulder a pat. Nadine spotted it and raised an eyebrow briefly, then led the way into an upstairs office, complete with a photo backdrop.

"Any preferences on the names?"

Sarah shrugged. "Not really. Probably for safety you should make us married. Although, the people hunting us might expect that. Siblings might be better."

Chuck's mouth dropped open. He hadn't expected her to suggest _that._

Sarah gave him a brief consoling glance. "But we should probably stock up while we've got the chance. Any spares you've got lying around we can grab?"

Nadine looked a little put out by the request. "I'm not a charity, Katie. I can get you two throwaways each, plus one that should hold up for a couple weeks. Beyond that, you've got to pay like everybody else."

Sarah nodded. "I'm sorry to impose on you like this in the first place. We've got a couple grand we can give you to help even the scales."

"Fake IDs haven't been that cheap for a lot of years," Nadine said. "And keeping one step ahead of the FBI these days is a lot harder than it useta be. But I'll take it. Two thousand buys you each a fake passport that should pass muster at least once getting you out of the US and into more trouble."

"Thanks," Sarah said. "I know you're giving me the family discount, and I appreciate it."

Then it was picture time. Luckily Nadine had spare clothes for just such an emergency, so they didn't have to go around in the same clothes as they were wearing in their new IDs. While the ink was drying on their new sets of IDs, Nadine offered them tea and cookies, which Chuck took to with gusto. Nadine and Sarah caught each others eyes and shared a little bit of a laugh at him, until Chuck spotted the smirk and glared at her. He set aside the cookie plate, and a crash came from downstairs.

"NYPD, this is a raid!"

"Crap, were you followed?" Nadine demanded.

"No," Sarah insisted. "We were careful. They must be after you."

"I guess Nadine had more heat on her than I thought," the older woman said. "Nice knowing you."

TO BE CONTINUED...

* * *

A/N: I really appreciate all the reviews so far, especially since it's been more than a year since the show went off the air. You guys and gals are all awesome. Please keep those reviews coming. I seriously need the encouragement at this point.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: Sorry for the long delay between chapters. this one starts right after the cliffhanger, so it might be a good idea to re-read if you need to. Without further ado...

* * *

Chapter 6:

"What?" Chuck said, a hint of panic finding its way into his voice.

"Don't you have an escape plan?" Sarah demanded. "You always told me to have an escape plan."

She grinned. "And I'm gratified to know you were paying attention. Of course I have an escape plan. Come on. Is your boyfriend always that easy?"

Sarah shrugged. "Well..."

"Ew, not what I meant, girl!"

Chuck blushed furiously, and Sarah grinned at him. They followed Sarah's not-quite-stepmom up the rear stairs to the top floor, through another room stuffed with antique junk, and past a heavy door. She turned and hauled the door closed behind them, putting all her weight into it to get the door moving. The door shut with a dull 'clong'-ing noise and the surprising Not-Janet spun a wheel to seal it shut.

"Wow," Chuck said. "You have a roof-submarine?"

"What are you talking about? It's a panic room."

"Oh. Um. Forget I said that. But we're not panicking are we? Well, okay, I might be panicking, but-"

"It's just the terminology."

"Oh. Um. Forget I said that too," Chuck said. "I'll just be over here, not making a fool of myself if that's okay with everybody?"

Sarah flashed a grin at Not-Janet, who rolled her eyes. "So, I assume the plan does not involve us trapped in the panic room? Just doesn't seem like a very good plan."

"Hang on, shh," Not-Janet cupped a hand to her ear. "Okay, I don't hear any police helicopters. We should be okay." She turned to what looked like a skylight and yanked a cord. A rope ladder fell down along one wall, and Not-Janet climbed quickly. The skylight swung open after a little fiddling with Not-Janet's keys, and Chuck and Sarah followed her up the ladder onto the roof. "Keep low," she said. "If they spot us we're sunk."

The three fugitives practically crawled to the edge of the roof, where Not-Janet had stacked a pile of planks. With whispered instructions, she let them know the plan.

The brownstones were close enough together on Not-Janet's street, that they should be able to use the planks as makeshift bridges. The only problem with the plan was that NYPD was working on surrounding the house, and the few quick glances over the edge of the roof revealed the tops of several officers' heads. None of them were looking up just yet, but that could change any moment.

Chuck and Sarah levered one of the planks out across the gap between the roofs, and Not-Janet beckoned Sarah to go first. "You're probably the lightest of us. I'm not sure the board will take your boyfriend's weight." Chuck held the end of the board and leaned over the edge to keep watch.

"Clear, go," he whispered, and Sarah scampered across, arms stretched out to her sides for balance. On the other side she dropped down to hold the far end of the board.

"You next," Not-Janet said.

"What if the board-"

"They're after me, not you. Just go. This is my fault for not keeping a low enough profile," she said, and pushed him toward the edge. Chuck waited until there were no police directly under and crossed himself before walking the plank, muttering to himself under his breath the whole time. "Don't look down. Don't look down." Sarah grabbed him and pulled him down beside her.

"Since when are you afraid of heights? " she said, then louder to her dad's ex. "Come on."

Not-Janet shook her head.

"They're through the door," she said. "Hear that? Stay down, I'll cover for you," and Not-Janet kicked the end of the board-bridge clean off her roof. Sarah grunted and tried to hang onto her end of the plank, but it slipped free and tumbled between the brownstones. "Good luck," Not-Janet said, and turned, raising her hands.

Sarah laid down on the sticky tar-paper roof and hauled Chuck down beside her. Shouts came from the other roof, and Sarah seemed to shrivel in upon herself. "NYPD! Don't move! You're under arrest!"

Chuck brushed a tear from her cheek. "She'll be alright."

"No. She won't," Sarah whispered. "She gave up."

"That's not what-"

"No, Chuck. She did. I could see it. She just gave up. She could have made it across before the cops made it to the roof."

Chuck folded her up in his arms.

"Promise me something. Don't give up. Whatever happens."

"I promise."

* * *

They stayed up on the roof for more than two hours, before the activity at Not-Janet's brownstone died down enough for them to slink away. Luckily the occupants of the house next door were off at work. Sarah and her lock-pick set made short work of the lock on the roof-access door, and they helped themselves to lunch out of the refrigerator and a suitcase from the upstairs closet. Chuck left a note and some cash along with a promise to mail the suitcase back..

From there, Chuck and Sarah -or Rick and Jordan Morrisson, as their new IDs named them- found a cheap hotel and planned their next moves.

"We're going to need a lot more money," Sarah said. "It's just a fact. If we're going to actually find this U-boat, we're going to need a boat equipped with a good sonar suite, diving supplies, all that stuff. I know that's the step after next, and we've kind of been living hand to mouth lately. But we need to start planning ahead. That's not gonna cut it anymore."

"You want to risk using our actual accounts?" Chuck said. "I mean, a one-off hacking I'm okay with, especially when we'll be making good on it, but it sounds like we're talking..."

"Well, I don't know exactly, but probably a couple hundred thousand at least."

Chuck whistled softly. "Wow. We start getting into six figures, even if I cover my tracks we up the profile substantially. If we tried hacking it, it'd get noticed, maybe even make the papers. We don't want that."

"And two hundred may be on the low end. It might need to be more," she said. "Depends what the market on used boats the size we need, is gonna be. It might be half a million if we have to go big, or the seller doesn't like haggling."

"Um." Chuck said. "So, yeah. If we're moving that kind of money it should probably actually be _our_ money."

"As long as you can keep from attracting unwanted attention while we do it."

"I might be able to, but let me think about it for a while?" Chuck said. "I don't want to mess up and bring the feds down on us, and hi-speed money laundering is a new playing field. I can probably get at least some cash out of our accounts, but keeping it off the radar, and untraceable is gonna be tricky."

"Okay," Sarah said. "It doesn't have to be completely untraceable. It just has to hold up long enough for us to find this U-boat and figure out what's really going on."

"So, what, a couple weeks?"

"If it's much longer than that, we might as well just pack it in and go on the run."

"Can't, no giving up, remember? You made me promise. Besides," Chuck said. "I don't like losing any more than you do. It'll take me awhile to do the research into banking laws."

"In the meantime, I'll book us some bus tickets."

"Really?"

"It's that or renting a car..." Sarah said. "And renting a car requires a credit card. Plus, we can try to steal a little extra sleep on a bus ride, while one of us would have to be driving if we rented a car. We'll need to be as fresh as we can when we get to DC. I'll go grab us some bus tickets, and some different hair dye, you start digging into the money situation with that big sexy brain of yours."

Chuck grinned. "You only love me for my parietal lobe," he said.

"What?"

"Part of the brain that works on maths," Chuck said.

"Really?"

"I don't actually know. I heard that somewhere. Probably not true, now that I think about it. I think it was Wikipedia." His grin banked hard into a frown. "Why hair dye?"

Sarah produced their new IDs. "Gotta at least try and match the pretty pictures," she explained."Now you get to be the redhead."

"And what'll you be?"

"It's a surprise."

"It's green, isn't it? You're going to dye your hair green."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "No. Weirdo."

"I don't know what was supposed to be so surprising about you being a dirty blonde," Chuck said when Sarah got back with the hair dyes. "I mean, I knew _that _all along. Baaaaa-zing."

"Har har," Sarah said, bobbing her head in the direction of the bathroom. Chuck helped her through her shift from redhead to somewhat mousey brown-blond, and then let Sarah plaster over his dyed-blond hair with vivid red. Sarah dumped a handful of water down the back of his shirt and Chuck leaped away from the sink, trailing red dye and dripping everywhere.

"Agh! Traitor!" Chuck said. "This means war!" He yanked the showerhead down and turned the water on full blast. Sarah's eyes widened and she shook her head. "Don't you dare..."

Chuck considered for all of a second, before he turned the water on her in retaliation.

Later, as they lay in each others arms in the tub, Chuck reflected that, on balance, being on the run from the CIA (and God only knows who else) wasn't all that bad, as long as he had Sarah.

* * *

The trip down from New York to DC, where the old National Archives building was located, went... undisastrously. Saying it went _well_ would have been a stretch. It went, though, and as fast as a four and a half hour bus ride can go. Mercifully, both Chuck and Sarah managed to get a little sleep, but only after a seemingly interminable period of crying babies, over-loud fratboys heading back from a weekend in the big city, and other assorted annoyances. The sun was just coming up when the greyhound bus pulled into the bus terminal in DC and Sarah prodded him awake with an elbow in the ribs. Chuck yawned heavily. "Have a nice nap?"

"It was okay," Chuck said. "Except somebody kept trying to play footsie with me and kept waking me up."

"Huh," Sarah said innocently. "Wasn't me. Maybe I should be jealous."

"A likely story, Walker. I'm on to you."

Sarah winced and leaned in. "Morrisson, remember," she said in his ear, and Chuck grimaced apologetically. They bumped foreheads gently, and then a voice intruded, "Come on, lovebirds, I ain't got all day." Chuck and Sarah retrieved their bags and headed out of the bus. Chuck splurged on some new clothes for both of them, since their plan involved him pretending to be a stuffy World War II scholar on a hunt for some obscure bit of background data, he got a tweed coat with leather patches on the elbows, which somehow Sarah found sexy, and nearly got them in trouble in the changing rooms. After the close call at the Burlington Coat Factory, they bought a cheap used car. So cheap in fact, that Chuck was briefly scared it was 'hot', though Sarah reassured him on that front after a quick check of the VIN numbers against the registration documents. They could afford the extravagance, since Chuck was pretty sure he'd nearly figured out a way to covertly smuggle a sizable chunk of change out of their savings accounts to a probably-mostly-untraceable Swiss bank account. They were down to only a couple hundred in small bills each at that point, but it was enough that it should see them through the next day or so before Chuck expected their new credit cards to show up express mail at a DC area Wells Fargo.

Sarah dropped Chuck off four full blocks away from the National Archives building where all the old navy records from World War II were kept. It was a huge square building with the neo-classical facade that a lot of government buildings in DC had adopted, with the white limestone construction and the pillars. Chuck called it paranoia, but he was unable to argue with pouty-Sarah for very long, and agreed to leg it the last half mile. Sarah found a parking spot and stayed back and watched him through the scope of the sniper rifle they were still toting around in a golf-bag from the altercation in France. She was careful to make sure no one was nearby and slouched in her seat around the scope to make it less obvious it was the sight off a rifle. Something wasn't right, that nagging paranoid suspicion wouldn't let go. Sarah started up the car and she circled the huge building, coming at it from another direction, once Chuck had disappeared inside with no obvious ill-effects. Traffic was bad, since they were just down the street from the Capitol building, and then it all really hit her at once. She'd been to DC one time on a con with her dad, back when she was thirteen or so, but they'd stayed well away from the memorials and the larger police presence they commanded.

She parked another couple blocks back, and scanned the main parking areas and the approaches to the Archives that were visible from her new parking spot. There were a fair number of commercial lots nearby, since the Archives, like a lot of things in and around Pennsylvania Avenue had, what might be considered historical significance. National monuments had never really tickled Sarah's fancy. It was all just dead plain white stone as far as she was concerned. It was the people that made the stories live and breathe, and in this case, it was her and Chuck that were important, not the Lincoln bedroom or the Taft extra-wide bathtub or whatever.

She bit her lip and decided against risking the scope again. There were probably Secret Service around, and despite her precautions the first time, it wouldn't be a great idea to be subjected to a 'friendly interview' with the Service when she had a pair of illegal rifles in the trunk of her car. Chuck had been inside for a couple of minutes when she spotted the surveillance team.

She finally spotted three people sitting in a parked sedan a hundred yards away. Sarah squinted, and then dug out her phone. The rifle sight was too conspicuous, but her phone camera had a zoom function better than a lot of dedicated camcorders. She couldn't quite make out all the details, and she didn't recognize the dark-haired woman in the driver's seat or the two men in the back seat. The pile of cigarette butts laying in the street next to the rear passenger window, however was a dead giveaway. Stakeout, they screamed to all of her conman instincts.

So, she wasn't paranoid after all. It was cold comfort, especially when, on the screen of her camera-phone, the woman barked an order and the two men got out and headed across the street and into the Archives after Chuck.

Sarah snapped pictures of the two men, trying to get their faces, but the angle was wrong. She sent Chuck the pictures with a text saying _told you._ And then hit his push-to-talk button.

"Any idea who the guys are?" he asked.

"Not really, other than that one of them's a smoker," Sarah explained briefly about the woman giving them their marching orders and the cigarette butts. "But I can't get a clear pic of her."

"Wow," Chuck said. "You'd think people would get the hint. I think I've seen that cigarette thing on TV half a dozen times."

"Well, you remember that whole 'this is your brain on drugs' thing from the eighties, right? Nicotine's at least as addictive as heroin."

"Fair enough," Chuck said. "So, what do I do?"

"You get a look at the files we need?"

"Not yet. My cover's holding up so far, but... oh, crap I'm getting the stink eye for answering my phone."

"Well, you've probably got a little time. They've still gotta find you."

* * *

"Yeah," Chuck said. "Gotta go." It wasn't like there were a lot of hiding places. The woman who he'd pitched his fake History dissertation to with the fake Georgetown Student ID Sarah had whipped up last night, glared at him. Chuck shrugged an apology. "Sorry about that. My advisor calling with another couple of documents I should look for while I'm here. And thanks again for fitting me in on such short notice."

"We had a sudden cancellation," she said, "Otherwise the wait would have been at least a couple of weeks."

She gave him a pair of latex gloves so that he wouldn't damage the documents. Chuck thought that was a little overkill. He had an old copy of Moby Dick that was twenty years older than these reports, and it held up fine to the oil in his skin. But, then again, his book collection wasn't open to the public, and Chuck figured it couldn't hurt to be courteous. As soon as she was out the door, Chuck hit Sarah up on his cell phone. "Anything else on the bad guys?"

"Not really. I don't want to change positions right now for a better angle and risk tipping off whoever she is."

"Good call," Chuck said. "Any ideas how we should work on getting me back out past her? Or these two goons?"

"Working on it. I got an idea, at least. It's not a plan yet, though."

"Okay. Great. Keep me up to date?"

"Definitely."

"Okay, let me get to work in here."

There was an entire cart of boxes, full of files that the research assistant had trudged into the room for him. Chuck scanned the box and grimaced. He was glad he'd splurged and got the best cameras available when he'd been building his and Sarah's cell phones. Chuck waded into the boxed reports, not really bothering to read anything except the labels on the boxes. Time was crucial, so he just grabbed the box with the closest dates to when Decker said the U-boat was sunk, and started flipping through reports as fast as he could, snapping pics with his cell phone as he went.

From the little he picked up just by osmosis if nothing else, Chuck figured he was taking useless pictures of irrelevant documents. He tried to narrow the search, and found a couple of likely files, which included after-action reports from destroyers. He matched the name of one up with the date he was looking for. Chuck started flipping and snapping faster.

His phone buzzed. "Yeah, Sarah?"

"More goons just arrived. They're taking orders from the woman too. Looks like these ones are circling the building so you can't use the far jumping out at you?"

"Maybe. I don't exactly have time to read all of these."

"Just stuff the likeliest file down your pants," she suggested. "We need to get moving in a hurry. About that plan you were asking about? You're not going to like it." She explained on for a few moments.

Chuck slipped out of the research rooms and off toward the restrooms with a handful of file folders-hopefully the right ones-under his coat. His hands were starting to sweat. It was just so... juvenile. He glanced both ways to make sure the coast was clear. Then, he pulled the fire alarm and ducked into the ladies' room. It was, thankfully deserted, and he barricaded himself in a stall. Sitting up on the top of the toilet hunched over so that his feet didn't show under the bottom and his head didn't poke up over the top wasn't as easy as the movies made it out either.

The archives were the kind of building where a fire alarm had to be taken seriously, even if it was hooliganism. With the number of paper records housed in the place, fire was a real danger, but standard sprinklers could ruin the archived documents just as easily. Chuck hoped it wasn't going to be like in the da Vinci code where they sucked all the oxygen out of the place. They hadn't thought ahead to have scuba tanks smuggled in ahead of time.

After a minute or two someone ducked into the ladies and shouted. "Everybody out, we've got to evacuate the building until the fire department clears everything up."

Procedures, bureaucracy. Why had he ever complained about them? Chuck waited until the building safety marshal or whatever took her leave, and came out of his hidey-place long enough to steal the fire extinguisher. It had enough heft he could maybe use it as a club if it came to that.

Sarah hadn't told him all of the plan, but she was supposed to come get him, and it'd be a few minutes at least before that happened. He went back in the stall, got the files out and glanced at them, getting caught up a little in the history of it and everything.

Chuck blinked and glanced at his watch. Five minutes had passed. Was that enough time for the fire department to arrive? The alarms were still blaring, but somehow he'd managed to tune them out. He heard the hinge creak and peeked out of his hidey-stall, fire extinguisher in hand, and tensed when the fireman spotted him. Crap.

"Hey there, good looking. Is that a fire extinguisher in your pants or are you just happy to see me?" the fireman said in Sarah's voice and pulled off her helmet. She turned and flipped the lock on the door.

"What? But that doesn't even make any sense. It's not in my pants. It's in my hands."

"Yeah but the joke doesn't work that way," Sarah said. "'Cause I obviously see that it's a fire extinguisher."

"But-"

"We don't have time to get into this," Sarah said. "Take off your pants, quick."

"Buwhaaa?" Chuck said. "Sarah, this is hardly the time for that kind of..."

"Oh my God, guttermind!" Sarah said. "I borrowed the fireman getup to sneak in past the woman still on surveillance detail outside. We need to switch clothes so they don't recognize you coming out. Seriously? We don't have time for you to dissect my one-liner but you think there's enough time that there's going to be sex? Come on." Sarah took the moment to doff her firefighter's coat and shrug out of her suspenders.

"Hey. Cut me a little slack. The venn diagram of the times you've said 'Chuck, take your pants off, quick!' and the time times we've had sex is just a circle; there's _no_ point that doesn't overlap.

Sarah rolled her eyes at him. "No time," she said. "Especially not for you to defend yourself with the nerdiest of all _possible_ diagrams. Take off your pants, now." Sarah kicked out of the fireman pants and Chuck blinked and froze, staring at her bare legs.

"Why don't you have any pants on under there?"

"Because, I'm gonna wear your clothes out of here, and you wear the fireman outfit. We're wasting time. Get moving."

"Okay, fine," Chuck said, heading back into the stall and closing the door, dragging the fire-extinguisher along the linoleum behind him.

Sarah rolled her eyes again. "Really? Like I haven't seen it before?"

"It's not you I'm worried about. Those legs of yours are highly distracting. I don't want to get fixated and lose my balance and accidentally put my foot in the toilet or something else out of a Farrelly brothers movie."

Sarah considered this for a moment, before she shrugged and went into the neighboring stall and tossed the fireman pants over the divider in on top of him. "Hey!" Chuck protested.

"Make with the pants," Sarah said. "My feet are getting cold." She decided against throwing the fire-fighter boots over the stall wall, and shoved them in underneath. Chuck flipped his pants to hang over the wall and Sarah grabbed them and reeled them in. She only had one foot in her borrowed pants when someone thudded into the door.

"It's locked," a voice said, barely audible through the door. Someone shushed the first voice, and Sarah grimaced. Obviously not firemen. They wouldn't have been worried about whoever was in the ladies room hearing them. In fact, the firefighters would be yelling for them to come on out and evacuate, since the all clear had yet to be sounded.

"Grab everything" Sarah whispered, "hurry, get up."

"Oh, crap..." Chuck muttered. Silenced gunshots aren't exactly silent under the best of circumstances, and indoors, they're not really mistakable for anything other than what they are. They're quiet-_er _than regular gunshots, especially when using slower, subsonic, ammunition so there isn't actually a tiny sonic boom accompanying every pull of the trigger. But even a dinky little twenty two caliber makes a pretty good thwack when fired. The two men out in the corridor had more gun than that, and even with what had to be excellent suppressors and subsonic rounds there were distinct, if muffled, cracks. Three quick shots, and then a couple seconds later, the door creaked on its hinges. Chuck's breath caught in his throat. He could hear their dress shoes clicking on the linoleum, he could practically feel their eyes as they ducked to look under the stalls and try and see his and Sarah's shadows. Juggling his new fireman's coat and the boots and his fire extinguisher were giving him enough trouble that he didn't want to deal with how to fight off a gunman or two at the moment. But, what choice did they have? At least he'd managed to get his suspenders up and in place.

"We know you're in there," the first voice said. "Why don't you make this easy on us. We have orders to take you alive, if possible, so let's not be stubborn. Okay?

Chuck could feel his grip on the fire-extinguisher faltering, and he cursed mentally as he shifted his grip and lost hold of one of the boots. It thumped to the linoleum, and Chuck let out a sigh. "Ah, hell," he said. "No point being a sore loser I guess." Hopefully that'd be enough for Sarah to guess he was trying to lull them. "We'd probably better give up."

Chuck dropped the rest of his fire-fighter gear and shifted awkwardly atop the toilet so that he had the fire extinguisher up on his shoulder.

He stepped down and carefully set his feet. In just his socks footing would be important, he didn't have time to try and put the boots back on, or wriggle out of his socks entirely. With his free left hand, Chuck slammed the bolt clear on the bathroom stall door. He waited, and let them make the first move. The door swung in, and Chuck moved. He surged half a step forward and brought the fire extinguisher down off his shoulder, turning his hips slightly. He'd guessed right, the gunman had used the tip of his silencer to push the door in on him. Which had it out front and vulnerable. The end of the fire extinguisher cracked the gunman's wrist and his suppressed pistol went skittering across the linoleum. Chuck recovered, grabbed the fire extinguisher in both hands and punched it forward like a spear, or a pool cue and pinged the metal right off the stunned and reeling gunman's forehead. The man went down and Chuck scooped up the pistol ready to turn it on the second gunman, but Sarah had obviously been thinking along the same lines.

Even as Chuck was taking care of his gunman, Sarah had grabbed the top of the stall door and vaulted over it, landing with all hundred twenty-five pounds of her body behind a flying knee to the side of the unfortunate second gunman's neck. He went down like a sack of potatoes and Sarah landed astride him, fist cocked for a thoroughly unnecessary elbow to the face. She kicked the man's gun away almost as an afterthought. Chuck stopped the gun with his foot and stared at her.

"Wow," Chuck said.

"I told you you should start coming to class with me," she said.

"No, not that," he said. "Just... never really noticed how vulnerable that position leaves me..."

Sarah remembered the fact that she wasn't wearing any pants, blushed, and held out a hand for Chuck to help her to her feet.

"What do we do with these two?"

"Depends who they really work for," Chuck said. Sarah nodded and started to bend over to check their wallets. Chuck cleared his throat. "Better let me do that. You should put on some pants."

Sarah snorted and returned to the stall while Chuck made a quick search of the unconscious-he made sure Sarah's was still breathing-gunmen. "So did we just assault federal agents? Please say no."

"Well... if they were CIA, I'd think carrying badges would kind of be out of the... idiom, wouldn't it? No government IDs at all. No drivers licenses even. Actually hang on... business card. But it doesn't say the company name. Just says Internal Security Contractor. And an O."

Sarah finished buttoning her pants. "Let me see?"

He handed over the card and she frowned at it. "Huh. Weird. Kind of looks like that ring from... what was it from that movie you made me watch with all the hairy-feet guys?"

"The Lord of the Rings?" Chuck said, and shook his head. "Hobbits don't carry this kind of hardware." He gestured with one of the guns to demonstrate. "What are the world's Tolkien fans coming to," Chuck said, mildly disheartened.

She rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Maybe it's a ring, not an O. Or something. Anyway, finish getting dressed. Those two are gonna be missed pretty darn quick. Or found. And standing over two bodies with guns in our hands would take a little bit of explaining."

"This is never going to work," Chuck whispered from behind the face-shield of his fireman's helmet. "They're gonna know how many men they sent into the building."

"Will you stop being such a worry-wart if I promise to put out later?" Chuck, staggered and nearly dropped her.

"Don't say things like that when I'm carrying you out of a phony fire alarm at a National Landmark," Chuck complained. "Headfirst down a flight of stairs is not the way I want this story to end."

"Took your mind off it, didn't I? Just stick to the script," she said.

A uniformed policeman spotted them. "Everything alright?"

"She fainted," Chuck said, keeping it short, and striding back toward the fire-truck as if he did this kind of thing all the time." The cop nodded and ignored them after that.

The rest of the firemen that had responded were still inside, it seemed, other than one man in the driver's seat, who asked the same question the police officer had. Chuck gave him the same answer, and went back to apparent invisibility. Chuck let Sarah down at the rear of the fire engine and stared at her. "How'd you know that would work?"

"Please, give the average male of the species a good 'damsel in distress' narrative and they never think twice about it."

"I never would have thought you'd suggest casting yourself in that role," Chuck said.

"Well, not in real life," she said airily. "But this is _theatre._"

"Really, I thought it was criminal mischief and impersonating a municipal employee."

"Tomato, tomahto."

Chuck rolled his eyes at her and doffed his fire helmet and rubber turnout coat. "Okay, what's next?"

"Hopefully all this activity pulled our last watcher out of position, and we just walk to the car and drive away," Sarah said. She peeked around the edge of the fire engine. "Looks good."

Chuck felt an itch between his shoulder blades as they walked across the street, but they made it to their waiting car without anyone shouting an alarm. Somehow the car-door closing seemed to poke a hole in him and let the tension drain out, even though he knew there was a fair to even chance that they had been spotted.

"So, what's this woman look like?" Chuck said. He opened the glovebox and retrieved the pair of pistols from the pockets of his fireproof pants, put them inside and spotted the rifle-scope. He turned it over in his hands and arched an eyebrow at Sarah.

She didn't point, merely bobbing her head. "Blue sedan hundred fifty yards up on the left."

Chuck turned craning his neck and using the scope as Sarah pulled a u-turn. He only had a couple moments to try and catch a glimpse, but it was enough.

He sat back in his seat, the rifle scope slipping between his fingers to the floorboards as the shock hit him. "Oh my god," he said. "Mom?"

TO BE CONTINUED...


End file.
